THE  LIBRARY 
OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


HOW  TO  READ 


HOW   TO    READ 

BY 
J.  B.  KERFOOT 

"  Reading  is  a  form  of  living  " 

BOSTON   AND   NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON    MIFFLIN    COMPANY 

(Cbe  Riiicrgi&c  pnpjf  Cambri&rje 

COPYRIGHT,    I916,    BY  JOHN    B.    KERFOOT 
ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 

Published  October  iQib 


Wit  »tt»tr«rt>e  S«S« 

CAMBRIDGE  •  MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED  IN  THE  U.  S.  A. 


PN 


(S-a 


G4G446 


CONTENTS 

I.  LEARNING  TO  READ I 

II.  MUCKRAKING  THE  DICTIONARY      .       .  29 

III.  WATCHING  THE  WHEELS  GO  ROUND    .  53 

IV.  WHAT  'S  THE  USE 88 

V.  A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 112 

VI.  THE    WORLD    OUTSIDE    US    AND    THE 

WORLD  WITHIN 14$ 

VII.  INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION   ....  I92 

VIII.  HOW   TO    READ    A    NOVEL      .       .       .       .221 

IX.  THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE       ....  265 


^    HOW  TO   READ    ^ 

CHAPTER  I 

LEARNING  TO  READ 
I 

A  few  months  ago  I  happened  to  be  present 
at  a  dinner  where  a  chance  question  led  to  an 
interesting  talk.  Some  phase  of  primary  edu- 
cation was  under  discussion;  and  in  the  course 
of  it  the  host,  turning  to  one  of  the  guests, 
asked,  "When  did  you  learn  to  read?" 

"At  three,"  was  the  prompt  reply,  given 
with  a  touch  of  pride. 

"And  you  ? "  said  the  host  to  the  next  guest. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  About  five,  I  suppose." 

"And  you?"  to  a  lady  beyond. 

There  was  a  moment's  embarrassed  hesita- 
tion. And  then,  with  something  about  scarlet 
fever,  came  the  confession  that  she  had  not 
learned  her  letters  till  she  was  nine. 

And  thus  it  went,  halfway  round  the  table. 

I 


HOW  TO  READ 

Now  these  replies  were  direct  and  perti- 
nent. They  were  categorical  answers  to  a 
technical  question.  Taken  separately,  they 
gave  the  exact  information  asked  for. 

And  yet,  as  they  piled  up,  one  after  the 
other,  there  seemed  to  be  something  about 
them  that  I  found  myself  vaguely  resenting. 

It  was  not  what  they  said.  It  was,  rather,  a 
discernible  common  denominator  of  implica- 
tion in  their  manner  of  saying  it. 

It  seemed  as  though  these  people  were 
leaving  out  of  account  all  the  other-than- 
technical  meanings  of  the  phrase  with  which 
they  dealt,  not  because  they  were  consciously 
excluding  these  deeper  meanings  for  the  mo- 
ment, but  because  they  unconsciously  ignored 
them  at  all  times. 

There  was  a  cumulative  inflection  of  finality 
in  their  declarations.  It  almost  sounded  as 
though,  in  dealing  with  the  primary-school 
meaning  of  "learning  to  read,"  they  felt  that 
they  had  dealt  with  the  whole  meaning  of  that 
expression.  And  while  it  never  entered  my 
head  at  the  moment  that  this  was  really  true, 
the  fact  that  it  was  somehow  being  made  to 
appear  true  struck  me  as  amusing.   It  struck 

2 


LEARNING  TO  READ 

me  as  amusing  enough  to  call  attention  to. 
And  so,  presently,  when  the  host  asked  me 
when  /  had  learned  to  read,  I  answered  with  a 
smile  that  I  was  still  learning. 

And  to  my  utter  astonishment  it  developed, 
in  the  chaffing  and  talk  that  followed,  that  no 
single  member  of  that  largely  literary  and 
more  or  less  intellectual  company  had  ever 
thought  of  the  expression  "learning  to  read" 
as  having  any  other  meaning  than  the  tech- 
nical, primary-school  meaning;  that,  namely, 
of  learning  the  alphabet,  learning  to  recog- 
nize words  made  out  of  the  alphabet,  learning 
the  dictionary  meanings  of  more,  and  more, 
and  still  more  words,  and  thus  learning  to 
receive  messages  sent  by  print  or  handwriting. 

No  one  of  them,  it  turned  out,  had  ever 
asked  himself  what  it  is,  exactly,  that  we  do 
when  we  read.  No  one  of  them  had  ever 
watched  himself  in  the  act  of  reading.  And 
all  of  them,  in  consequence,  had  retained  in- 
tact the  careless  assumption  that  reading  is 
essentially  a  receptive  process.  They  all  looked 
upon  it,  let  us  say,  as  though  print  were  a 
sort  of  silent  telephone,  into  one  end  of  which 
an  author  delivers  a  message,  and  from  the 

3 


HOW  TO  READ 

other  end  of  which  (by  simply  "knowing  how 
to  read")  his  audience  receives  it. 

Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  and  as  we  shall  see 
presently,  this  is  not  true  at  all.  It  is  not  even 
an  inadequate  statement  of  the  facts;  it  is 
a  misstatement  of  them.  And  when  I  had 
pointed  out  something  of  this,  —  when  I  had, 
hurriedly,  and  to  the  poor  best  of  my  sur- 
prised unpreparedness,  mobilized  a  few  argu- 
ments and  illustrations  in  defense  of  what  I 
had  regarded  as  a  neutralized  axiom,  —  we 
began,  in  the  course  of  the  give-and-take  of  the 
talk  that  followed,  to  make  discoveries.  And 
we  continued,  excitedly  and  joyously,  to  make 
them  until  I  a.m. 

We  discovered  that  the  common-school 
definition  of  "learning  to  read"  is  so  univer- 
sally accepted  as  the  whole  definition,  that, 
while  almost  every  newspaper  and  magazine 
publishes  regular  articles  on  what  to  read, 
none  of  them,  so  far  as  any  of  us  knew,  ever 
publishes  articles  on  how  to  read.  We  discov- 
ered that,  while  there  is  a  whole  literature  of 
books  about  books,  —  about  what  books  it 
behooves  us  to  read,  and  why  it  behooves  us 
to  read  them,  and  what   (according  to  the 

4 


LEARNING  TO  READ 

author)  it  behooves  us  to  read  into  them,  — 
there  is  little  or  nothing  in  the  whole  literature 
about  literature  that  tells  us  anything  at  all 
about  how  we  have  to  read  books  and  what  it 
is  that  we  have  to  read  into  them.  We  discov- 
ered —  But,  enough!  What  we  are  here  con- 
cerned with  is  the  last  discovery  that  we  made ; 
the  discovery  upon  which,  so  to  say,  the  in- 
quiry culminated  and  broke  up;  the  discovery 
that  I  have  tried  to  summarize  in  a  sentence 
on  the  title-page  of  this  book. 

We  discovered  that  reading,  so  far  from 
being  a  merely  receptive  act,  is  a  creative  proc- 
ess. That  it  is  "creative,"  not  simply  in  the 
more  or  less  cant-sodden  "artistic"  sense,  but 
in  a  biologic  sense  as  well.  That  it  is  an  active, 
largely  automatic,  purely  personal,  construe-  j. 
tive  functioning.  That  it  is,  indeed,  a  species 
of  anabolism.  In  short,  that  it  is  a  form  of  liv- 
ing. And  as  this  last  expression  will  be  found, 
as  we  proceed,  progressively  to  absorb  and 
adequately  to  sum  up  the  essence  of  our  suc- 
cessive conclusions,  I  will  put  it  that  it  is  this 
last  "discovery" — the  discovery  of  reading  as 
a  form  of  living  —  that  I  propose  to  examine 
and  hope  to  elucidate  in  the  following  pages. 

5 


HOW  TO  READ 

And  now,  having  said  this  much  by  way  of 
introduction;  having,  as  it  were,  established 
a  mental  take-off;  let  us,  like  sensible  swim- 
mers, dive  at  once  into  the  deepest  pool  that 
our  preliminary  subject  affords. 

ii 

Until  ten  or  twelve  years  ago,  no  man  who 
ever  lived  could  tell  another  man  a  story. 

I  am  sorry  to  begin  by  making  so  obviously 
idiotic  a  statement.  But  I  have  two  excuses 
for  doing  so.  One  (which  I  merely  mention  in 
passing)  is  that  the  statement  is  literally  true. 
The  other  (upon  which  I  want  to  lay  all  pos- 
sible emphasis)  is  that  the  trueness  of  this 
truth  is  of  the  essence  of  our  inquiry. 

Allow  me,  therefore,  to  repeat  the  state- 
ment. 

From  the  beginning  of  time,  right  down 
until  about  ten  years  ago,  no  man  ever  lived 
who  could  tell  another  man  a  story.  Moses 
could  n't.  Homer  could  n't.  Chaucer  could 
n't.  The  minstrels  and  minnesingers  could  n't. 
Dante  could  n't.  Dickens  could  n't.  Even 
Conan  Doyle  could  n't. 

The  best  that  the  very  best  of  them  ever 

6 


LEARNING  TO  READ 

succeeded  in  doing  was  to  trick,  or  to  coax,  or 
to  compel  their  readers  or  their  hearers  into 
telling  stories  to  themselves. 

"Pshaw!"  you  are  very  likely  going  to  ex- 
claim at  this  point.  "Here  is  a  man  pretend- 
ing to  explain  one  idiotic  statement  by  making 
another."  And  perhaps  it  does  look  that  way. 
But,  before  we  continue  the  discussion,  let  us 
take  a  few  minutes  off  and  go  to  the  movies. 

in 

That  stirring  photo-play,  "The  Two  Rat- 
tlesnakes," is  on  the  bill. 

We  scuttle  down  the  darkened  aisle  and 
slip  into  some  vacant  seats  near  the  front. 

There  is  a  little  hissing  splutter  overhead. 
A  flickering  green  frame,  with  "Jim  meets  a 
Rattler"  inside  it,  springs  into  view  on  the 
dim  curtain.  And  a  moment  later  the  entire 
audience,  and  we  with  them,  have  settled 
down  into  an  eager,  yet  perfectly  passive,  re- 
ceptivity, and  are  looking  (through  a  hole  in 
the  darkness)  at  the  arid  slope  of  an  Arizona 
sheep-ranch,  where  a  cowboy  with  a  lamb  in 
his  arms  and  an  old  ewe  at  his  heels  is  picking 
his  way  down  the  rocky  and  cactus-grown 

7 


HOW  TO  READ 

hillside.  On  he  comes,  twisting  and  turning; 
near  enough  now  for  us  to  see  the  litheness  of 
his  limbs  and  his  cheery  eyes.  Then,  suddenly, 
there  is  a  blur  of  motion  at  his  feet.  A  snaky 
something  launches  its  length  and  strikes  for 
a  second  at  his  knee.  Bewilderment,  horror, 
realization,  chase  each  other  across  his  face. 
We  see  him  drop  the  lamb;  snatch  out  a  knife; 
rip  away  the  cloth;  slash  the  naked  flesh;  bend 
to  suck  the  poison  from  the  wound.  We 
watch  him  make  a  tortion  bandage  from  the 
kerchief  at  his  neck.  We  watch  him  start, 
limping,  down  the  hill.  We  watch  him  waver, 
and  stumble,  and  stop  to  rest  with  his  hand  on 
a  boulder.  We  watch  him  press  on;  and  fall; 
and  get  up;  and  struggle  on  again.  We  see 
him  fall,  and  fail  to  rise.  We  see  him,  with  a 
last  spurt  of  strength,  pull  his  six-shooter 
from  its  holster;  fire  three  slow  shots  in  the 
air;  and  drop  back  into  unconsciousness.  And 
we  see  a  little  cloud  of  distant  dust  turn  into 
the  mounted  figures  of  his  friends;  see  them 
ride  furiously  up;  leap  to  the  ground;  gather 
round  him;  examine  his  hurt;  lift  his  inert 
body  to  a  horse's  back,  and  ride  away  —  just 
as  the  hole  in  the  darkness  disappears  and 

8 


LEARNING  TO   RKAD 

we  find  ourselves  back  again  in  the  dim-lit, 
crowded  hall. 

Now  it  would  be  nice  to  sit  out  the  show. 
To  see  how  "Mollie  gets  the  News"  — 
Mollie  in  her  Harlem  flat;  with  her  sleeves 
rolled  up  above  her  plump  forearms;  inter- 
rupted in  the  act  of  touching  a  moist  finger  to 
a  hot  iron  by  the  coming  of  a  telegram  — 
"Jim  bitten  by  a  rattler.  Come  at  once."  To 
see  her  drag  a  chair  to  the  corner  cupboard; 
take  down  the  old  teapot;  empty  its  contents 
on  the  ironing-board;  stuff  the  money  into 
her  purse;  put  on  her  wraps  and  go.  To  see 
her,  in  the  next  reel,  poring  over  time-tables 
in  an  emigrant  sleeper;  while  the  other  rattle- 
snake—  a  human  one — watches  her  from 
across  the  aisle.  To  see  him  scrape  acquaint- 
ance with  her;  learn  her  story;  get  out  maps; 
offer  suggestions;  finally  send  a  telegram  of 
his  own  —  "Meet  me  at  Dry  Gulch  with  the 
buckboard."  To  see  her  whisked  behind  fast 
horses  to  the  cattle-thieves'  camp.  To  see 
the  cowboy  raid;  the  timely  rescue;  the  ride 
to  the  ranch;  the  reunited  lovers.  To  see  the 
human  rattler  tied  hand  and  foot  and  tossed 
(on  the  same   hillside   that  Jim  came  down 

9 


HOW  TO  READ 

in  the  beginning)  into  the  center  of  a  grim- 
faced  circle  and  within  reach  of  a  coiled 
something  that  writhes,  and  springs,  and 
dashes  obscene  fangs  against  his  contorted 
face. 

But  we  have  n't  time  for  that.  We  must 
get  back  to  our  discussion.  Let  us  slip  out 
quietly  while  the  hall  is  dark. 

IV 

Do  you  happen  to  know  how  the  movies  are 
made? 

They  begin,  like  any  other  piece  of  fiction, 
in  the  mind  of  a  man  who  has  told  himself  a 
story.  Having  done  so,  he  undertakes,  by 
means  of  a  short  piece  of  descriptive  writing 
(called  a  scenario)  to  guide  the  imagination  of 
his  readers  along  the  road  his  own  imagina- 
tion has  followed.  And  this  scenario  is  sub- 
mitted to  a  movie-manager,  who,  if  he  likes 
it,  buys  it  and  turns  it  over  to  his  producing 
department. 

Now  the  producing  department  of  a  mov- 
ing-picture concern  is  a  remarkable  establish- 
ment. It  has  a  long  list  of  actors  at  its  beck 
and  call.   It  has  storehouses  full  of  stage  prop- 

10 


LEARNING  TO  READ 

erties.  It  has  clothes-presses  full  of  costumes. 
It  has  a  card  index  of  "likely  places."  It  has 
a  corps  of  mechanics  to  do  its  bidding.  And 
when  the  scenario  of  an  author's  story  is 
turned  over  to  the  directing  intelligence  of 
this  establishment,  he  chooses  actors  for  it 
from  his  troupe.  He  supplies  them  with  cos- 
tumes from  his  cupboards.  He  draws  stage 
properties  from  his  stores.  He  selects  scenes 
from  his  card  index.  He  has  his  mechanics 
provide  effects  that  are  not  in  stock.  And 
finally,  before  the  recording  eye  of  the  camera, 
he  proceeds  —  well  or  ill  according  to  his 
ability  and  his  resources  —  to  re-tell  the  au- 
thor's story  in  the  concrete  terms  of  his  own 
equipment. 

And  for  us  who  sit  in  the  audience  his  re- 
telling—  his  reading  of  the  story — is  final. 
You  may  know  a  hillside  far  more  picturesque 
than  the  one  Jim  comes  down.  But  you  can- 
not substitute  it,  in  your  mind,  for  the  movie- 
man's  hillside.  /  may  know  a  girl  a  dozen 
times  more  Molly-ish  than  the  Mollie  of  the 
film.  But  I  cannot  cast  her  for  Mollie' 's  part 
in  "The  Two  Rattlesnakes."  The  movie- 
man  is  reading  the  author's  story,  not  we. 

II 


HOW  TO  READ 

For  the  moment  he  stands,  like  St.  Peter,  at 
the  gates  of  our  imaginations.  What  he 
chooses  is  chosen.  What  he  puts  in  is  in. 
What  he  leaves  out  is  out. 

He  is  the  first  man  who  has  told  another 
man  a  story  since  the  world  began. 

"But,"  you  are  perhaps  exclaiming,  "how 
then  about  the  others?  How  about  Virgil? 
And  Cervantes?  And  Balzac?  And  —  Marie 
Corelli?" 

Every  one  of  them,  from  the  least  to  the 
greatest,  has  but  written  for  the  movies. 

Not  for  the  movies  of  the  photo-theater,  but 
for  the  movies  of  our  minds. 

For  a  novel  is  nothing  but  an  elaborate 
scenario.  And  each  of  us  is  a  moving-picture 
concern. 

When  we  examine  a  book  at  a  bookstore; 
when  we  look  at  the  opening  sentences,  and 
read  a  snatch  of  conversation  on  page  247, 
and  turn  back  to  the  last  page  to  see  how  it 
alUends,  —  a  scenario  has  been  submitted 
to  the  manager.  When  we  pay  down  our 
$1.35,  or  present  our  library  card  to  be 
stamped,  —  we  have  purchased  the  local 
rights  in  it.    And  when  we  switch  on  our 

12 


LEARNING  TO  READ 

electric  reading-lamp,  and  stretch  out  in  our 
favorite  chair,  and  open  the  book  at  the  first 
chapter,  —  we  turn  the  tale  over  to  our  pro- 
ducing department. 

And  the  producing  department  of  a  human 
moving-picture  concern  is  also  a  remarkable 
establishment. 

All  the  people  we  have  ever  known,  plus 
thousands  we  have  spoken  to,  or  crossed  eyes 
with  in  a  crowd,  or  watched  in  public  places, 
or  merely  glimpsed  in  passing,  are  actors  at 
its  beck  and  call.  And  it  can,  moreover,  pick 
and  choose,  not  only  among  these  actors,  but 
among  their  attributes.  It  can,  and  that  in 
the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  take  a  chance  ex- 
pression on  the  face  of  one's  best  friend,  the 
body  of  a  blacksmith  seen  years  since  at  a 
country  crossroad,  the  mustache  of  yester- 
day's organ-grinder,  and  the  eyes  of  last 
year's  cotillion  leader,  and  cast  the  composite 
of  them  (together  with  the  composite  sug- 
gestion of  personality  that  results)  as  the 
villain  of  a  piece. 

It,  too,  has  memory  storehouses  full  of 
stage  properties;  mental  cupboards  crammed 
with  costumes;   a   brain-cell  index  of   likely 

13 


HOW  TO  READ 

places.  It,  too,  has  a  marvelous  mechanic, 
called  Imagination,  that  contrives  effects  that 
are  not  in  stock  out  of  odds  and  ends  of  raw 
material. 

And  when  a  story-teller's  scenario  is  sub- 
mitted to  it,  the  directing  mind  of  this  estab- 
lishment—  contriving,  as  they  are  needed, 
actors  from  this  troupe;  stage  properties  from 
these  stores;  costumes  from  these  cupboards; 
scenes  from  this  cell  catalogue  —  proceeds, 
paragraph  by  paragraph  and  page  by  page, 
before  the  estimating  eye  of  our  intelligence, 
and  well  or  ill  according  to  its  ability  and 
its  resources,  to  re-tell  the  author's  story  in  the 
recollective  and  imaginative  and  emotional  terms 
of  its  own  equipment. 

v 

Do  you,  by  any  chance,  doubt  this? 

If  so,  I  have  a  confession  to  make.  I  have, 
deliberately  and  with  malice  aforethought, 
deceived  you.  The  photo-play  performance 
of  "The  Two  Rattlesnakes"  never  took 
place.    There  never  has  been  such  a  photo-play. 

I  made  that  all  up  "as  I  went  along,"  as 
the  children  say.    And  I  placed  before  you, 


LEARNING  TO  READ 

not  a  story,  but  only  the  skeleton  of  a  story  — 
the  merest  dry  bones  of  a  half-finished  sce- 
nario. 

Yet  I'll  warrant  that  in  reading  it  you 
pictured  to  yourself  a  Jim  of  your  own  fancy- 
ing, walking  down  a  hillside  of  your  own  in- 
vention. That  you  contrived  a  Mollie  to  your 
own  liking  and  placed  her  in  a  flat  of  your 
own  furnishing.  That  at  the  last  you  in- 
vested the  horrid  death  of  the  villain  with 
emotions  dictated  by  your  own  temperament. 
That  you  either  exulted  in  a  punishment  that 
so  poetically  fitted  the  crime,  or  shuddered  to 
see  men,  made  in  God's  image,  capable  of  such 
horrors. 

Is  it  not  so? 

Moreover,  when  you  stop  to  consider  it, 
you  will  see  that  this  cannot  be  otherwise. 

The  terms  of  one's  own  equipment  are  the 
only  terms  in  which  a  story  can  reach  us. 

For  the  heroine  that  the  author  imagined  is 
forever  invisible  to  us,  no  matter  how  mi- 
nutely he  describes  her.  And  though  his  scene 
for  the  moment  be  Chicago,  and  though  we 
chance  to  live  there,  it  is  in  our  Chicago,  and 
not  in  his,  that  we  stage  that  chapter  of  his 

15 


HOW  TO  READ 

tale.  Indeed,  if  he  describes  a  character  too 
minutely,  —  if  he  keeps  our  minds  too  long 
from  imagining  their  own  protagonists  in  the 
effort  to  imagine  his,  —  our  minds  end  by 
shrugging  their  shoulders,  going  on  strike, 
and  refusing  to  imagine  any.  And  it  is  for  the 
same  reason  that  we  so  often  skip  elaborate 
descriptions  of  scenery,  and  that  meticulously 
word-painted  landscapes  commonly  prove  in- 
visible to  the  eyes  of  our  imaginations. 

Nor  is  it  alone  to  the  things  of  the  senses 
that  this  inexorable  law  applies.  It  is  the 
same  with  less  tangible  stage  properties. 
When  we  are  called  upon  to  "register"  hor- 
ror, we  have  only  our  own  brands  of  that 
emotion  to  register.  When  a  mental  attitude 
is  asked  of  us,  we  can  but  place  our  own 
minds,  like  lay  figures,  in,  or  somewhere  near, 
the  posture  demanded.  And  if  the  specifica- 
tions of  our  author's  scenario  include  a  spirit- 
ual reaction,  we  must  either  supply  it,  or  a 
substitute  for  it,  from  the  laboratory  of  our 
own  spirit,  or  else  pass  on,  saying  in  effect  (as 
the  motion-picture  man  would  say  in  the 
vernacular),  "Kill  that  soul  stuff!" 


16 


LEARNING  TO  READ 


VI 

But  let  us  go  back  for  a  moment  to  that  be- 
ginning which  we  have  skipped.  Let  us  go 
back  to  the  nursery  and  to  our  own  "learning 
to  read." 

Let  us  suppose  that  you  have  just  mastered 
your  letters  (or,  if  you  happen  to  belong  to 
the  later  order,  that  you  have  not  mastered 
them)  and  that  you  are  about  to  receive  your 
first  lesson  in  reading. 

A  book  is  placed  before  you,  open  at  the 
first  page. 

On  this  page  is  the  woodcut  of  an  animal. 
And  below  that  are  the  mystic  hieroglyphics, 
See  the  Cat. 

Do  you  see  what  has  happened? 

Do  you  perceive  the  significance  —  the 
practical  symbolism  —  of  this  performance? 
Do  you  see  that  at  the  very  threshold  of 
"learning  to  read,"  even  in  the  restricted, 
common-school  sense  of  learning  to  interpret 
an  arbitrary  code  of  black  marks  on  white 
paper,  there  has  been  placed  before  you,  as  a 
symbol  of  what  you  are  to  do,  the  moving  pic- 
ture reduced  to  its  simplest  form  ?  Do  you  see 

17 


HOW  TO  READ 

that  in  effect,  and  by  the  silent  pantomime 
of  that  juxtaposition,  they  are  saying  to  you, 
"Visualize,   darn  you!"? 

But  perhaps  you  will  balk  at  this  interpre- 
tation. 

Let  us,  therefore,  suppose  again. 

Let  us  suppose  that  there  is  no  house  cat  in 
your  home. 

Let  us  suppose  that  the  weeks  have  gone  by 
and  that  you  have  learned  to  read  many  pages 
in  your  picture  primer;  and  that  one  fine 
morning,  on  a  pictureless  page  in  another 
book,  you  come  across  again  those  now  famil- 
iar characters,  See  the  Cat. 

What  happens  now? 

Why,  instantly  and  inevitably  you  visualize 
the  woodcut. 

Why?  Because  it  is  the  only  cat  you  have 
in  stock;  and  so,  willy-nilly,  you  cast  it  for  the 
hero  of  the  sentence.  You  have,  in  short,  on  a 
ridiculously  inadequate  capital,  begun  your 
own  career  as  a  moving-picture  concern. 

Let  us  pursue  the  inquiry. 

Let  us  suppose  that  you  go  for  a  few  weeks' 
visit  to  some  cousins  in  the  country,  and  that 
one  of  them  has  a  Maltese  kitten. 

18 


LEARNING  TO  READ 

And  let  us  suppose  that  on  your  return, 
fearing  perhaps  that  you  had  forgotten  your 
lessons,  they  put  that  old  primer  in  your 
hand,  open  at  the  first  page. 

What  happens  this  time? 

Do  you  accept  the  woodcut? 

Not  you.  As  you  take  in  the  words  See  the 
Cat,  your  mind  presents  you,  unasked,  the 
picture  of  a  blue-gray  kitten,  the  extreme  tip 
of  its  tail  twitching  back  and  forth  above  the 
grass,  and  one  curved  paw  tapping  a  red  apple 
just  fallen  in  the  orchard.  And  with  this  pic- 
ture comes  a  swift  sense  of  soft  winds;  and 
just  a  taste  of  cider. 

You  have,  you  see,  increased  the  capital  of 
your  moving-picture  establishment  and  are 
already  exercising  your  prerogatives  as  a 
producing  manager.  You  have  just  rejected 
with  scorn  the  illustrator's  offer  to  supply 
your  equipment.  You  are  telling  the  author's 
story  yourself. 

VII 

And  now  I  think  that  we  are  ready  to  sum 
up. 

Or,   shall   we   put   it   that   we   have   now 

19 


HOW  TO   READ 

acquired  the  equipment  necessary  to  read 
what  follows?  For  that,  after  all,  is  what  we 
really  mean. 

We  read,  then,  quite  literally,  with  our  own 
experience.  We  read  with  what  we  have  seen 
and  heard  and  smelled  and  tasted  and  felt. 
We  read  with  the  emotions  we  have  had  — 
with  the  love  we  have  loved,  the  fear  we  have 
feared,  the  hate  we  have  hated.  We  read  with 
the  observations  we  have  made  and  the  de- 
ductions we  have  drawn  from  them;  with 
the  ideas  we  have  evolved  and  the  ideals  we 
have  built  into  them;  with  the  sympathies  we 
have  developed  and  the  prejudices  we  have 
failed  to  rid  ourselves  of. 

"Learning  to  read"  in  the  common-school 
sense  —  learning,  let  us  put  it,  to  read  print 
and  learning  to  read  handwriting  —  has  ex- 
actly as  much  (and  exactly  as  little)  to  do 
with  our  reading  of  a  novel  as  it  has  with 
Forbes-Robertson's  ''reading"  of  Shake- 
speare. 

Learning  to  read,  in  the  real  sense,  means 
enlarging  our  equipment,  and  learning,  cre- 
atively, to  use  it. 

We  receive  in  reading;  but  we  receive,  not 

20 


LEARNING  TO  READ 

directly  by  what  the  author  tells  us,  but  in- 
directly, by  the  new  uses  that  he  stimulates 
as  into  putting  our  experience  to. 

For  reading  consists  of  our  making — with 
the  aid  of  the  pattern  and  the  hints  supplied 
by  the  author,  but  out  of  our  mental  stock, 
which  we  have  produced  by  living  —  some- 
thing that  never  existed  before;  something 
that  only  exists  at  all  in  so  far  as  we  make  it; 
something  that  can  never  be  duplicated  by 
any  other  reader;  something  that  we  ourselves 
can  never  wholly  reproduce. 

Reading  is  a  copartnership.  What  we  re- 
ceive from  it  is  in  the  nature  of  dividends  on  a 
joint  investment. 


VIII 

M 


Yes,"  I  seem  to  hear  some  one  saying, 
this  is  very  interesting  and  quite  true  — 
about  fiction.  But  how  about  a  philosophic 
treatise?  How  about  an  abstract  sociological 
argument?  How  about  a  discussion  of  scien- 
tific principles?" 

It  is  all  quite  as  true  of  these  kinds  of  read- 
ing as  it  is  of  a  novel,  or  of  a  magazine  story, 
or  of  a  newspaper  account  of  a  fire. 

21 


HOW  TO  READ 

You  can  no  more  put  a  new  idea  into  a 
person's  head  than  you  can  tell  him  a  story. 
All  that  you  can  do  is  to  stimulate  him  into 
making  new  combinations  out  of  the  ideas 
already  there. 

"But  how,  then,"  I  seem  to  hear  the  same 
objector  saying,  "do  new  ideas  get  into  peo- 
ple's heads,  if  you  cannot  put  them  there?'1 

The  answer  to  this  is  Topsy's:  They  grow. 

I  recall  the  tale  of  a  servant  who  was  a 
most  dependable  agent  for  doing  anything 
that  she  had  once  been  shown  how  to  do,  but 
who  (or  so  her  bachelor  employer  thought) 
had  never  had  an  original  idea  in  her  head 
since  she  was  born.  But  it  happened  that  one 
of  her  acquired  accomplishments  was  the 
making  of  ice-cream.  And  one  hot  day  in 
summer,  when  a  thunderstorm  had  unex- 
pectedly sent  the  mercury  tumbling  down 
into  the  sixties,  he  was  suddenly  confronted, 
not  only  with  a  squat  figure  standing  in  his 
study  door,  but  with  the  complete  destruction 
of  his  theory. 

"Say!"  his  servant  was  saying,  "if  I  turn 
the  handle  backward  will  it  unfreeze  the 
cream?" 


LEARNING  TO  READ 


IX 

The  truth  is  that  our  heads  house  other  in- 
dustries beside  that  of  moving-picture  making 
And  one  of  these  is  a  distillery. 

Here  the  raw  materials  of  crude  experience 
—  like,  say,  the  jerking  of  a  burned  finger  out 
of  the  flame  —  are  treated  by  a  secret  process 
and  "  ideas  "  —  like  the  idea  that  fire  is  hot  — 
are  extracted  from  them.  You  cannot,  as  most 
of  us  know  from  experience,  put  the  idea  that 
fire  is  hot  into  a  child's  head.  The  best  that  you 
can  do  is  to  supervise  the  delivery  of  the  raw  ex- 
perience at  the  gate  of  the  distillery. 

But  we  are  more  than  distillers  of  low-grade 
ideas  —  of  these  comparatively  crude,  first- 
hand realizations. 

We  are  blenders  and  rectifiers  of  these  as 
well. 

We  combine  two  or  more  of  them  and  from 
the  mixture  we  distill  a  sublimated  extract — ■ 
the  idea,  say,  of  a  resemblance.  We  combine 
a  number  of  these  ideas  of  resemblance  and 
from  the  blend  distill  a  still  more  rarefied  es- 
sence—  the  idea,  say,  of  a  generalization. 
And  each  of  these  ideas  —  each  of  these  home- 

23 


HOW  TO   READ 

made  products  of  our  distillery  —  becomes  a 
permanent  item  of  our  stock  in  trade.  Each  of 
them  is,  so  to  say,  stored  away  in  its  own  bot- 
tle, ready  for  use  in  our  further  experiments. 

And  these  further  experiments  —  these 
combinings  of  ideas  that  we  have  in  stock  — 
are  by  no  means  always  made  on  our  own 
initiative.  They  are  often  —  more  often  than 
otherwise  —  made  on  order,  or  by  suggestion. 

Smith  meets  Jones  in  the  subway  and  they 
have  a  little  chat. 

Later,  Smith  says  to  his  wife,  "Keen  chap, 
that  Jones.  He  gave  me  a  new  idea  to-day." 

But  of  course  he  did  n't. 

What  Jones  gave  him  was  a  formula. 

He  suggested  that  if  Smith  would  take 
some  of  the  Idea  in  Bottle  68,  and  some  of  the 
Idea  in  Bottle  7042,  and  mix  them,  he'd  get 
such  and  such  a  result.  And  Smith  did.  And 
he  got  it. 

But,  suppose  Smith  had  n't  had  the  ingredi* 
ents  in  stock  ? 

x 

Let  us  take  our  own  case. 

When  you  began  this  chapter,  you  quite 

24 


LEARNING  TO  READ 

definitely  did  n't  have  in  your  head  several 
ideas  that  are  now  there. 

You  did  n't,  for  instance,  have  in  your  head 

the  idea  that  authors  do  not  tell  us  stories; 

that   they  only  issue   instructions   to  us  for 

telling  ourselves  stories;  that  they  only  write 

'scenarios"  for  us  to  "produce." 

How,  then,  did  this  idea  get  into  your  head? 

Not,  certainly,  by  my  putting  it  there. 

If  you  are  inclined,  for  the  moment,  to 
think  that  I  did  this,  you  have  only  to  turn 
back  to  section  n  of  this  chapter  in  order  to 
see  how  you  felt  toward  it,  and  what  you 
thought  of  me,  when  I  pretended  to  think  that 
I  could  put  this  idea  into  your  head. 

No.   I  did  n't  put  it  there.   I  could  n't. 

All  that  I  could  do  was  to  furnish  you,  in 
the  proper  order,  the  various  formulae  needed 
for  distilling  it;  to  see  that  you  were  supplied, 
on  occasion,  with  certain  necessary  raw  ma- 
terials; and  to  stimulate  you,  from  time  to 
time,  to  make  certain  combinations  out  of 
these  ingredients. 

I  knew,  for  instance,  that  you  were  going 
to  need  the  idea  that  there  were  two  meanings 
to  the  expression  "learning  to  read";  and  I 

25 


HOW  TO  READ 

was  afraid  that  you  might  not  have  this  idea 
in  stock.  So  I  suggested  that  you  take  a 
number  of  ideas  that  I  knew  you  could  supply 
from  stock  — ■  the  ideas  of  an  inquisitorial 
host;  of  a  series  of  guests,  each  of  whom 
thought  in  his  own  way  that  he  had  learned 
to  read,  once  for  all,  when  he  was  a  child;  and 
of  one  guest  who  thought  that  he  had  n't  — 
I  suggested  that  you  take  these  simple  ideas 
and  mix  them  in  a  certain  way.  And  you  did 
as  I  suggested  and  got  the  desired  result  — 
the  more  complex  idea. 

And  I  took  pains  to  "stimulate  you  into 
making  this  new  combination  of  ideas  that 
were  already  on  hand." 

That  was  a  part  of  my  job  as  author. 

I  did  it,  in  this  case,  by  inducing  you  to 
dramatize  the  ideas;  by  inducing  you  to  im- 
agine people  holding  these  ideas,  or  enacting 
them.  In  fine,  I  did  it  by  inventing  this  din- 
ner party;  which,  like  the  photo-play  of  "The 
Two  Rattlesnakes,"  never  took  place. 

But  the  dinner  party  and  the  photo-play 
were  invented  for  entirely  different  reasons. 
In  the  latter  case  I  knew  that  you  were  going 
to  need  the  idea  that  we  read  in  terms  of  our 

26 


LEARNING  TO  READ 

own  equipment  and  not  in  terms  of  the  author's 
equipment;  and  I  was  also  afraid  that  you  did 
not  have  this  idea  in  stock. 

But  this  is  an  idea  that  is  not  easily  derivable 
from  the  mixing  of  other,  simpler  ideas.  This 
is  an  idea  that  we  get  best  first-hand,  from 
experience  —  by  actually  doing  the  thing 
and  watching  ourselves  do  it.  It  is  practically 
one  of  those  realization-ideas,  like  the  idea 
that  fire  is  hot.  Its  extreme  complexity  is  due 
to  the  extreme  complexity  of  the  experience 
itself. 

So  I  took  measures  to  supply  you  with  the 
experience. 

I  wrote  a  scenario  and  I  tricked  you  into 
"producing"  it. 

And  then,  while  the  experience  was  fresh  in 
your  mind,  I  called  your  attention  to  what 
you  had  done. 

XI 

Philosophy  or  fiction,  then,  it  is  all  one. 

Kant's  "Critique  of  Pure  Reason"  is  as 
much  a  scenario  as  is  Stevenson's  Treasure 
Island."  They  merely  call  for  different  equip- 
ments to  "produce"  them. 

27 


HOW  TO  READ 

Reading  either  of  them  is  a  partnership 
transaction  between  the  author  and  ourselves. 

And  in  either  case  our  dividends  will  depend 
upon  (i)  the  amount  of  our  contributed  capi- 
tal; and  (2)  upon  the  number  and  the  nature 
of  the  "turn-overs"  we  are  stimulated  into 
making  with  it. 


CHAPTER  II 

MUCKRAKING    THE    DICTIONARY 

I 

Looking  up  at  my  calendar  as  I  begin  this 
chapter,  I  notice  that  I  have  an  engagement 
to-night.    I  am  going  to  the  theater. 

I  also  notice  that  it  is  the  first  of  April.  And 
I  wonder,  in  passing,  whether  this  is  a  coinci- 
dence, or  whether  there  is  also  a  divinity  that 
guides  our  beginnings,  rough-hew  them  as  we 
will.  At  any  rate,  the  day  is  well  lit  upon.  To 
talk  of  the  dictionary  on  April  Fools'  Day  is 
as  appropriate  as  to  wear  green  on  the  seven- 
teenth of  March. 

However,  let  us  get  back  to  my  engage- 
ment. 

The  play  we  are  going  to  see  has  made  a 
great  hit.  We  had  to  get  tickets  weeks  in  ad- 
vance. The  house  will  be  packed  to  the  roof. 

Suppose  I  jump  up  on  my  seat  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  third  act  and  shout  "Fire!!" 

What  does  your  imagination  suggest  as  the 
result? 

Panic? 

29 


HOW  TO  READ 

Stampede? 

Women  trampled? 

Clothes  torn  from  men's  backs? 

Five  or  six  hundred  well-fed,  well-dressed, 
outwardly  kindly  folk,  suddenly  swept  by  a 
brain-storm  of  herd-horror;  and  then,  quiet, 
and  a  few  still  bodies  sprawled  in  the  empty 
aisles? 

Probably. 

And  what  would  have  been  responsible  for 
all  this? 

Terror.  Instant,  unreasoned,  irresistible 
terror. 

And  what  would  have  caused  this  terror? 

An  idea. 

And  what  would  have  detonated  this  idea, 
like  a  bomb,  in  five  hundred  minds  at  once? 

A  shouted  word. 

Surely,  this  must  be  a  very  terrible  word? 
A  word  with  a  most  immemorial,  definite, 
terror-striking  meaning? 

ii 

But  hold  on  a  minute. 
It  happens  that  Jim  Sedgworth  dined  with 
me  last  night. 

30 


MUCKRAKING  THE  DICTIONARY 

You  don't  know  Jim.  But  he  is  one  of  those 
big,  blue-eyed,  absent-minded,  intensely-in- 
earnest  fellows,  whose  greatest  joy  in  life  is  to 
pounce  on  an  idea  and  worry  it.  Jim  treats  an 
idea  exactly  as  though  he  were  a  bull  pup  and 
it  were  the  corner  of  a  sofa  cushion. 

Well,  when  we'd  finished  dinner,  and  I  had 
given  Jim  a  cigar,  and  he'd  cut  the  end  off  of 
it;  I  saw,  by  the  way  he  searched  his  pockets, 
and  by  the  puzzled  frown  between  his  eyes  as 
he  talked  (he  had  just  gotten  an  idea  by  the 
ear  and  was  beginning  to  growl  at  it),  that  he 
had  left  his  matches  at  home.  So  I  caught  the 
butler's  eye;  and  he,  presently,  brought  a  little 
alcohol  lamp  and  stood  at  Jim's  side  with  it. 

But  Jim  had  his  idea  by  the  throat  by  then 
and  did  n't  notice. 

''Fire,  Sir,"  said  the  man. 

Jim  paid  no  attention.  And  yet,  curiously 
enough,  I  noticed  that  his  hand  stopped  grop- 
ing in  his  pockets. 

"Fire,  Sir,"  said  the  butler,  again,  a  little 
louder. 

Jim  did  n't  seem  to  notice,  even  yet.  He 
did  n't  start.  He  did  n't  look  round  and  say, 
"Oh  —  yes  —  thank  you."   He  went  right  on 

31 


HOW  TO  READ 

talking.  He  gave  his  idea  a  final  shake.  He 
disdainfully  tossed  the  carcass  of  it  on  to  the 
table  between  us,  as  who  should  say,  "Re- 
suscitate that  if  you  can."  And  then,  his  eyes 
fixed  on  mine,  he  leaned  a  little  sideways  to- 
ward the  lamp.  The  frown  disappeared  from 
his  forehead.  With  his  eyes  still  on  mine,  he 
stuck  the  end  of  his  cigar  into  the  little  blue 
flame.   And  he  puffed. 

Now  what  caused  Jim  to  stop  groping  for 
matches? 

What  gradually  wiped  the  perplexed  frown 
from  his  face? 

What  caused  him,  while  his  real  attention 
was  fixed  on  his  argument  and  his  eyes  on  me, 
to  avail  himself  of  the  proffered  lamp? 

Let  us  put  it  that  these  things  were  the  re- 
sult of  a  slowly  dawning  sense  of  a  need  about 
to  be  supplied. 

And  what  caused  this  sense  of  approaching 
satisfaction? 

The  gradual  taking  form  of  a  vague  idea  in 
the  back  of  his  mind. 

And  what  was  it  that  prompted  the  slow 
generation  of  this  idea  in  his  half-conscious* 
ness  ? 

32 


MUCKRAKING  THE  DICTIONARY 

A  repeated  word. 

Surely,  this  must  be  a  most  reassuring 
word?  A  word  with  an  age-old,  ingratiating, 
domestic  significance? 

in 

But  hold  on  again! 

It  is  the  same  word! 

Or,  are  we  mixing  things  up? 

Are  these,  perhaps,  two  different  words 
that  happen  to  be  spelled  alike? 

Or  are  they  the  same  word,  used  in  two 
different  senses? 

Let  us  consult  the  dictionary. 

IV 

On  second  thought,  however,  and  while  the 
dictionary  is  being  gotten  down  from  the 
shelf  for  us,  let  me  tell  you  what  it  is  that  I 
want  to  show  you. 

We  made,  in  the  last  chapter,  some  rather 
startling  discoveries. 

We  discovered,  for  instance,  that  authors 
do  not,  because  they  cannot,  tell  us  stories  or 
put  new  ideas  into  our  heads.  That  they 
merely  guide  and  prompt  us,  with  varying 

33 


HOW  TO  READ 

skill  and  effectiveness,  in  telling  stories,  and  in 
building  up  ideas,  for  ourselves. 

We  discovered  that  books  are,  in  reality, 
nothing  but  more-or-less  elaborate  scenarios 
■ — descriptions  of  the  stories  or  syntheses  that 
their  authors  want  us  to  stage  in  our  minds; 
and  that  the  only  material  we  have  to  draw 
upon  for  the  "producing"  of  these  scenarios 
is  our  own  experience  —  the  stored  products 
of  the  living  we  have  done. 

In  fact,  we  discovered  that  reading,  instead 
of  being  the  comparatively  passive  and  es- 
sentially receptive  process  that  we  are  in  the 
habit  of  considering  it,  is  in  reality  an  in- 
tensely personal  and  creative  activity. 

We  are,  we  found,  astonishingly  "on  our 
own"  when  we  read  a  book. 

But  we  have  not,  even  yet,  pushed  our  in- 
vestigations in  this  regard  quite  home. 

We  have  not,  even  yet,  discovered  how 
much  "on  our  own"  we  really  are  when  we 
read. 

For  story  scenarios  are  written  in  words. 
And  while  we  have  discovered  where  we  get 
our  stories,  we  have  yet  to  discover  where  we 
get  our  word-meanings. 

34 


MUCKRAKING  THE  DICTIONARY 

We  have  discovered  that  no  man  can  tell  us 
a  story. 

We  have  yet  to  realize  that  no  man  can  tell 
us  the  meaning  of  a  word. 

v 

"What!"  you  are,  of  course,  going  to  ex- 
claim at  this  point,  "and  how,  then,  about 
the  dictionary?" 

Allow  me  to  be  as  shocking  as  possible.  The 
dictionary  is  the  very  last  place  in  which  you 
will  find  this  information. 

However,  don't  think  for  a  moment  that  I 
expect  you  to  take  my  word  for  this.  I  quite 
realize  that  you  do  not  believe  me.  But  fortu- 
nately, and  just  in  the  nick  of  time,  here 
comes  the  dictionary  to  speak  for  itself. 

Here  is  Funk  and  Wagnall's  New  Stand- 
ard Dictionary  of  the  English  Lan- 
guage. Let  us  resume  our  interrupted  in- 
vestigation by  seeing  what  it  has  to  tell  us. 

VI 

We  were  wanting  to  know  whether  the 
word  "fire"  as  supposedly  shouted  in  the 
theater,  and  the  word  "fire"  as  spoken  to  Jim 

35 


HOW  TO  READ 

Sedgworth  by  the  butler,  were  perhaps  two 
different  words  that  happened  to  be  spelled 
alike. 

The  dictionary  tells  us  that  the  word  "fire" 
only  occurs  twice  in  English;  once  as  a  verb, 
and  once  as  a  noun.  And  as  both  of  these 
words,  as  used,  are  nouns,  they  must  necessa- 
rily be  the  same  word,  used  in  different  senses. 

At  least  one  would  suppose  so. 

Let  us  see,  however,  what  the  dictionary 
has  to  say. 

The  dictionary  gives  fourteen  or  fifteen  dif- 
ferent meanings  for  the  noun  "fire"  and  di- 
vides these  into  six  groups.  Here  they  are:  — 

Fire,  (i)  The  evolution  of  heat  and  light  by 
combustion;  also,  the  combustion 
thus  manifested,  especially  the  flame, 
or  the  fuel  as  burning. 

(2)  The  discharge  of  firearms;  firing. 

(3)  One  or  more  sparks,  especially  as 
emitted  by  iron  or  stone  when  struck 
by  a  substance  hard  enough  to  tear  it. 

(4)  Any  light,  luster,  or  flash  resembling 
fire. 

(5)  Liveliness  or  intensity  of  thought,  feel- 
ing, or  action ;  ardor;  passion;  vivacity. 

(6)  Any  raging  evil;  a  severe  affliction; 
sore  trial;  as,  the  fires  of  persecution. 

36 


MUCKRAKING  THE  DICTIONARY 

Well? 

This  does  n't  seem  to  help  us  much, 
does  it? 

There  is  manifestly  but  one  of  these  mean- 
ings —  but  one  of  these  fourteen  or  fifteen 
meanings  divided  into  six  groups  —  that  in 
any  remotest  degree  connects  itself  with  my 
supposed  cry  in  the  theater. 

This  is  the  last  meaning  in  the  first  group :  — 

the  combustion  thus  manifested,  especially 
the  flame,  or  the  fuel  as  burning. 

And  there  is  but  one  of  these  meanings  — 
but  one  of  these  fourteen  or  fifteen  meanings 
divided  into  six  groups  —  that  in  any  remot- 
est degree  connects  itself  with  the  butler's 
proffer  of  the  cigar-lighter. 

Namely,  the  last  meaning  in  the  first 
group :  — 

the  combustion  thus  manifested,  especially 
the  flame,  or  the  fuel  as  burning. 

But,  these  are  not  different  meanings! 
These  are  the  same  meaning! 
And  not  only  that. 

This  "dictionary  meaning"  does  not,  in 
either  case,  indicate  in  the  remotest  degree 

37 


HOW  TO  READ 

the  meaning  actually  conveyed  by  the  word 
as  used. 

Jim  Sedgworth  certainly  could  n't  have  got- 
ten his  meaning  of  the  word  as  used  by  the 
butler  from  the  dictionary. 

The  theater  audience  to-night,  should  I 
shout  that  word  from  my  seat  during  the 
third  act,  certainly  would  n't  get  its  meaning 
of  it  from  the  dictionary. 

Evidently,  if  we  have  nowhere  to  go  for  our 
word-meanings  except  to  the  dictionary,  we 
are  up  a  tree. 

VII 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  we  are  merely 
up  against  two  very  interesting  questions:  — 

(i)  Where  do  we  get  the  meanings  of  words  ? 

(2)  What  is  the  function  of  the  dictionary? 

Let  us  tackle  the  latter  question  first.  And, 
to  that  end,  let  us  begin  by  setting  down,  as 
clearly  as  we  can,  the  meanings  actually  con- 
veyed by  the  word  "fire"  as  used  in  these  two 
cases. 

Let  us  put  it  that  the  meaning  conveyed  tG 
an  audience  by  the  word  "Fire!"  shouted  in 
a  theater  would  be  something  like  this:  — 

38 


MUCKRAKING  THE  DICTIONARY 

The  frightful  Theater-fire-death  is  upon  us!  We 
are  trapped!   Every  man  for  himself! 

And  let  us  put  it  that  the  meaning  actually 
conveyed  to  Jim  Sedgworth  by  "Fire,  Sir," 
as  spoken  by  the  butler,  was  something  like 
this:  — 

Sir,  give  over  groping  and  frowning;  the  slight 
fire-service  that  you  require  is  here  at  your 
elbow. 

If,  now  that  we  have  them  before  us,  we 
compare  these  two  meanings;  if  we  examine 
them  carefully,  but  with  an  eye  to  resem- 
blances rather  than  to  differences;  we  shall 
find  that  they  have  one,  and  only  one,  ele- 
ment in  common.  In  each  the  fire-notion  is 
present. 

And  if  we  now  turn  back  to  that  vague 
"dictionary  meaning"  of  the  noun  "fire," 
which,  of  all  the  "dictionary  meanings" 
given,  we  found  to  be  the  only  one  remotely 
connectible  with  either  of  these  cases,  and 
equally  connectible  with  each  of  them; 
namely,  — 

the  combustion  thus  manifested,  especially 
the  flame,  or  the  fuel  as  burning,  —   « 

39 


HOW  TO  READ 

we  shall  discover  that  it  is,  in  reality,  nothing 
but  a  definition  of  this  fire-notion. 

Suppose,  now,  with  this  discovery  in  our 
minds,  we  reexamine  the  six  groups  of  mean- 
ings given  by  the  dictionary  for  the  noun 
"fire." 

We  shall  find  that  they  can  be  described, 
and  summed  up,  as  follows:  — 

(i)  The  evolution  of  heat  and     Definitions   of 
light   by    combustion;    also     the  general 
the  combustion  thus  mani-     fire-notion, 
fested,  especially  the  flame, 
or  the  fuel  as  burning. 

(2)  The  discharge  of  firearms;     A  definition  of 
firing.  the    shooting- 
iron  fire-notion. 

(3)  One  or  more  sparks,  espe-  A  definition  of 
dally  as  emitted  by  iron  the  flint-and- 
or  stone  when  struck  by  a  steel,  or  horse- 
substance  hard  enough  to  shoe-and-cob- 
tear  it.  ble  fire-notion. 

(4)  Any  light,  luster,  or  flash  Definitions  of 
resembling  fire.  the  looks-like- 

fire-to-the-eye 
notion. 

40 


MUCKRAKING  THE  DICTIONARY 

(5)  Liveliness  or  intensity  of  Definitions  of 
thought,  feeling  or  action;  the  makes- 
ardor;  passion;  vivacity.  you-think-of- 

fire  notion. 

(6)  Any  raging  evil;  a  severe  Definitions  of 
affliction;  sore  trial;  as,  the  the  makes- 
fires  of  persecution.  you-think-of- 

the-effect-of- 
fire  notion. 

In  fine,  we  have  hit  upon  the  function  of 
the  dictionary;  which  is,  not  to  give  us  the 
definite  meanings  of  words  as  used,  but  to  de- 
fine the  root-ideas;  the  type-notions;  the  lowest 
common  denominators  of  grouped  meanings; 
for  which  words,  by  long  usage  and  slow  develop- 
ment, have  come  to  stand. 

And  this,  as  we  shall  see  more  clearly  in  a 
few  moments,  cannot,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
be  otherwise.  For  words,  in  themselves,  — 
words,  that  is  to  say,  without  context,  —  do 
not  possess  definite  meanings.  They  merely 
stand  for  generalized  ideas.  They  are  magic 
formulae  —  rubbed  lamps  —  "Open  Sesames!" 
—  by  which  we  command  the  presence  of 
"notions"  in  one  another's  minds. 


41 


HOW  TO  READ 

VIII 

It  is  possible  that  at  first  blush  you  doubt 
my  soundness  in  making  this  statement.  If 
so,  I  can  refer  you  to  the  dictionary  itself. 
For  the  dictionary  knows  this  fact  perfectly, 
—  or,  rather,  partially,  —  but,  for  reasons  of 
its  own,  does  n't  force  it  on  our  notice.  It 
prints  it,  in  very  small  type,  in  a  dark  corner 
where  you  will  be  unlikely  to  come  across  it; 
but  where,  if  accused  of  not  knowing  its  own 
business,  it  could  triumphantly  point  it  out. 
On  page  2730  of  the  New  Standard  Diction- 
ary, tucked  away  among  some  other  com- 
ments on  the  word  "word,"  appears  the  fol- 
lowing: — 

In  human  language,  all  words,  except  proper 
names  and  some  exclamations,  are  signs  of  gener- 
alized ideas,  called  notions. 

Please  bear  this  statement  of  the  diction- 
ary's in  mind.  We  will  have  occasion  to  refer 
to  it  later  on. 

IX 

And  now  for  our  other  question:  where  do 
we  get  the  meanings  of  words  as  actually 
used? 

42 


MUCKRAKING  THE  DICTIONARY 

We  have  already,  as  it  happens,  stumbled 
on  the  answer  to  this  question  also.  We  get 
the  meanings  of  words,  as  actually  used,  from 
the  context. 

The  matter,  however,  is  not  quite  so  simple 
as  this  sounds.  Let  us  look  at  it  a  bit  more 
closely. 

Suppose  I  say  to  you,  "I  am  going  down 
town  to  get  a  down  pillow." 

My  meaning,  because  of  the  context,  is 
perfectly  clear  to  you  in  spite  of  the  two 
"downs." 

Or  you  would  probably  say  so. 

But,  is  it? 

Do  you,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  know  what 
"down  town"  means  to  me?  Do  I  know  what 
it  means  to  you?  Do  we  understand  the  same 
thing,  all  the  way  through,  by  "down  pil- 
low"? Or  does  "down  pillow,"  possibly, 
mean  to  you  an  aid  to  luxurious  ease?  To  me, 
as  it  happens,  it  means  a  squashy  nuisance 
that  is  forever  shedding  white  fuzz  on  the 
back  of  my  coat. 

In  short,  are  the  other  words  the  whole  of  the 
context  ? 

Let  us  see  for  ourselves. 

43 


HOW  TO  READ 

Let  us  return  for  a  moment  to  the  crowded 
theater. 

Here  we  had  a  single  word,  shouted  by  it- 
self. Whence  do  these  five  hundred  people 
get,  at  the  same  instant,  the  same  meaning 
from  this  word?  Not  from  the  verbal  context, 
since  there  is  none.  They  get  it  from  the  ma- 
terial context:  —  from  the  big,  crowded  house, 
and  the  small,  distant  exits;  from  their  com- 
mon knowledge  of  the  horrors  of  theater  fires; 
from  the  context,  in  short,  of  the  shared  situa- 
tion. 

But  even  this  is  not  all. 

Up  to  a  certain  point  —  to  the  exact  point 
up  to  which  the  situation  is  really  shared  — 
these  people  get  a  practically  identical  mean- 
ing from  the  shouted  word.  But  each  of  them 
gets,  also,  a  more  definite  meaning  yet;  a  per- 
sonal meaning. 

The  little  lady  in  G  34  gets  the  meaning 
that  two  babies  at  home  will  be  motherless  if 
she  does  n't  somehow  get  out  before  the  rush. 

The  big  man  in  B,  next  seat  but  one  to  the 
aisle,  gets  the  meaning  that  he  must  manhan- 
dle the  flabby  fellow  at  his  right  in  order  to 
get  started  while  the  going  is  good. 

44 


MUCKRAKING  THE  DICTIONARY 

The  fireman  near  the  main  exit  gets  the 
meaning  that  now  at  last  he  is  "on  duty"  in 
deadly  earnest. 

And  so  on,  and  so  forth,  through  five  hun- 
dred variations. 

In  fact,  the  personal  character  and  the 
private  concerns  of  every  man  and  woman  in 
that  theater  are,  for  him  or  her  self  but  for  no 
one  else,  a  part  of  the  context. 

We  ourselves,  our  endowments  and  deriva- 
tions, our  past  performances  and  present  en- 
tanglements, in  fine,  the  sum  total  of  living 
that  we  have  stored  in  us,  are  always  and  al- 
ways, forever  and  ever,  a  part  of  the  context 
from  which  we  derive  the  meaning  of  every 
word  that  we  hear  spoken  or  read  in  print. 

x 

"Learning  to  read,"  therefore,  does  not 
only  mean  increasing  our  stored  experience, 
physical,  mental,  and  spiritual;  and  learning 
to  draw  on  these  stores  more  and  more  skill- 
fully for  the  "producing"  of  our  authors' 
scenarios.  It  means,  also,  enlarging  our  "per- 
sonal contexts";  developing  our  responsive- 
ness to  "verbal  contexts";  and  learning  to 

45 


HOW  TO  READ 

draw  more  and  more  discriminatingly  on 
these  two  sources  for  the  word-meanings  in 
which  we  interpret  the  directions  that  our  succes- 
sive partners,  the  authors,  issue  to  us. 

XI 

This,  dramatically  considered,  would  ap- 
pear to  be  the  proper  place  to  ring  down  the 
curtain  on  this  chapter.  But  before  doing  this 
I  want  to  be  certain  that  you  realize  the  ab- 
solute universality  of  the  explanation  above 
set  forth. 

I  chose  the  word  "fire"  to  use  as  an  illus- 
tration because  it  seemed  convenient.  But 
I  might  have  chosen  any  one  of  the  349,999 
other  words  in  the  New  Standard  Dictionary. 
For  they  all,  without  exception,  stand,  in 
their  respective  degrees,  for  "generalized 
ideas  called  notions";  and  it  is  invariably 
from  the  contexts  —  verbal,  situational,  per- 
sonal —  that  we  derive  the  specific  meanings 
which,  in  actual  use,  we  individually  assign  to 
them. 

But  I  have  more  than  a  suspicion  that  you 
are  still  inclined  to  question  this.  You  are,  I 
dare   swear,   bursting  at  this  very   moment 

46 


MUCKRAKING  THE  DICTIONARY 

with  suggested  exceptions.  You  are,  I  am 
certain,  feeling  around  with  the  fingers  of 
your  mind  for  words  —  words  that  you  know 
must  exist  —  whose  meanings  are  singular 
and  absolute. 

Well,  there  are  no  such  words. 

Not  in  practice  at  any  rate. 

I  defy  you  to  find  one,  inside  the  dictionary 
or  out. 

For  they  exist  only  in  theory.  And,  even 
there,  they  are  hard  birds  to  get  hold  of.  The 
only  way  to  catch  one  is  to  put  salt  on  its  tail 
—  the  intellectual  salt  called  metaphysics. 

XII 

"  But,"  you  are  doubtless  wanting  to  remind 
me,  "the  dictionary  itself  expressly  says  that 
'In  human  language,  all  words,  except  proper 
names  and  some  exclamations,  are  signs  of  gen- 
eralized ideas  called  notions.'" 

Exactly.  But,  let  me  remind  you  in  turn, 
we  are  engaged  in  muckraking  the  dictionary. 
And  the  dictionary  is  either  less  practically 
perspicacious  than  it  thinks  itself,  or  less  in- 
tellectually honest  than  it  pretends  to  be,  in 
making  this  statement. 

47 


HOW  TO  READ 

It  either  fails  to  realize  that  it  is  talking 
common  sense  in  the  unitalicized  portion  of 
the  quoted  sentence,  and  metaphysics  in  the 
italicized  portion;  or  else  it  deliberately  aban- 
dons, in  practice,  the  double  standard  that  it 
sets  up  in  theory.  For  no  one  can  detect  the 
alleged  difference  of  status  between  these 
classes  of  words  by  examining  the  text  of  the 
dictionary. 

Let  us  try  for  ourselves. 

Let  us  look  up  a  proper  name  in  the  New 
Standard  Dictionary  (where  proper  names 
are  listed,  in  ordinary  alphabetical  order,  in 
the  text);  and  then  take  the  next,  ordinary, 
word  in  the  column;  and  compare  the  two. 
Suppose  we  take  "Aristotle."  The  next  word 
after  "Aristotle"  is  "aristotype."  Here  is 
what  the  dictionary  says  about  them: — ■ 

Aristotle.  A   Greek   philosopher    (384-322    B.C.); 

pupil  of  Plato;  teacher  of  Alexander  the 

Great. 

Aristotype.  Phot.  A  print  made  on  paper  treated 

as  with  mixed  collodion  and  gelatin, 

capable  of  receiving  a  high  polish. 

Well?  How  about  it?  Now  that  you  have 
read  what  the  dictionary  has  to  say,  is  "aris- 

48 


MUCKRAKING  THE  DICTIONARY 

totype"  a  "notion"  to  you  and  "Aristotle" 
not? 

Or,  as  a  matter  of  cold,  practical  fact,  is 
not  your  notion  of  "Aristotle"  just  as  general- 
ized as  it  was  before  consulting  the  diction- 
ary, while  your  notion  of  "aristotype"  has 
become  a  trifle  more  specific  than  formerly? 

XIII 

But  perhaps  you  think  that  Aristotle  is  not 
a  fair  selection.  He  has  been  dead  such  a  long 
time  that  our  notions  of  him  are  naturally 
hazy. 

Let  us  get  into  the  twentieth  century:  into 
the  lime-light. 

Let  us  put  it  that  proper  names  run  all  the 
way  from  "John  Doe,"  which  stands,  by  defi- 
nition, for  a  generalized  idea,  to  "Teddy 
Roosevelt,"  which  stands,  let  us  say,  for 

A  type  of  human  being  of  which,  "more's  the 
pity,"  or  "thank  God!"  (according  to  our  per- 
sonal contexts)  there  happens  to  be  but  one. 

Dr.  Woods  Hutchinson  pointed  out,  some 
years  ago,  that  "night  air"  was  the  only  kind 
of  air   we   have   to   breathe  —  at   night.     I 

49 


HOW  TO  READ 

would  respectfully  point  out  that  a  general- 
ized idea  is  the  only  idea  we  have,  either  of 
Mr.  Aristotle  or  Mr.  Roosevelt,  and  that 
"Aristotle"  and  "Teddy  Roosevelt"  stand 
for  them. 

Words,  after  all,  are  but  push-buttons. 
When  we  press  them,  they  call  up  notions  in 
other  minds.  When  I  push  the  button 
"Teddy,"  it  calls  up  a  notion  of  Teddy  in 
your  mind.  It  does  n't  call  up  my  notion  of 
him.  It  does  n't  call  up  his  notion  of  himself. 
It  calls  up  that  generalization  which,  at  the 
moment,  stands  for  your  notion  of  him. 

xiv 

So  much,  then,  for  proper  names.  As  for 
"some  exclamations,"  the  dictionary  defines 
"O"  as  "an  exclamation  of  lamentation." 

It  defines  "Oh"  as  "a  natural  ejaculation 
evoked  by  sudden  surprise." 

It  defines  "Ah"  as  "an  exclamation  ex- 
pressing various  emotions  according"  —  in 
short,  according  to  the  context. 

And  so  on  through  the  list.  In  short,  it  de- 
fines these  words  as  standing  for  ideas  that 
are  merely  a  little  more  generalized  than  the 

50 


MUCKRAKING  THE  DICTIONARY 

others.  One  can,  for  instance,  imagine  a  fat 
and  very  self-satisfied  dictionary  exclaiming, 
"0!"  or  "Oh!!"  or  "Pshaw!"  or  even 
"Ouch!"  as  these  little  mistakes  are  pointed 
out  to  it. 

You  will  find  it  an  amusing  game  and  a 
helpful  exercise  to  take  a  list  of  words,  —  any 
words,  like  "spirituality,"  "toward,"  "hum- 
ble," "angrily,"  "diphthong,"  "potato," 
"Aristophanes,"  "Humph!"  —  and  satisfy 
yourself  in  each  case  of  the  relevancy  of  the 
facts  set  forth. 

You  will  find  that  they  are  all  —  nouns, 
verbs,  adjectives,  adverbs,  proper  names,  ex- 
clamations, what-not  —  you  will  find  that 
they  are  all  "signs"  alike;  all  signals,  rubbed 
lamps,  mental  push-buttons. 

You  will  find  that,  as  any  one  of  them  is 
presented  to  you,  a  "notion"  springs  up  in 
your  mind. 

You  will  find  that,  while  these  notions  dif- 
fer in  degree  of  vagueness  (your  "Humph!" 
notion  will  be  vaguer  than  your  "Aristoph- 
anes" notion,  which,  in  turn,  will  be  vaguer 
than  your  "potato"  notion),  each  of  them 


51 


HOW  TO  READ 

will  prove,  on  examination,  to  be  a  "general- 
ized idea." 

And  you  will  find,  finally,  that  each  of  these 
ideas  is  a  generalization  made  from  your  own 
stored-up  experience. 


CHAPTER  III 

WATCHING   THE    WHEELS    GO    ROUND 

I 

It  is  not  customary  for  authors  to  print  their 
prefatory  remarks  at  the  beginning  of  the 
third  chapter.  But  this,  for  reasons  that  will 
presently  appear,  is  what  I  am  about  to  do. 

The  object  of  this  book,  briefly  stated,  is 
to  help  its  readers  to  a  more  intelligent  em- 
ployment of  reading  for  their  own  individual 
ends  —  whatever  those  may  be. 

But  since  this  object,  thus  summarized, 
will  seem  to  many  to  imply  the  setting  forth 
of  some  definitely  formulated  technique,  — 
of  a  specific  formula  that  needs  only  to  be  fol- 
lowed, —  there  are  no  doubt  those  who  are 
already  looking  to  see  this  book's  instructions 
summed  up  for  them  in  a  set  of  cut-out-able, 
pin-up-able,  memorizable,  and  try-it-on-a- 
dog-able  rules.  They  are  looking,  let  us  say, 
for  something  analogous  to  those  lists  of  in- 
structions commonly  furnished  us  in  treatises 
on  "  How  to  Grow  Thin  " :  —  so  many  of  such 

53 


HOW  TO  READ 

and  such  stoopings  and  flexings  before  the 
morning  tub;  so  many  miles  at  a  brisk  walk 
after  breakfast;  so  and  so  many  tens  and 
twenties  and  fifties  of  such  and  such  rollings 
and  toe-touchings  before  getting  into  bed; 
supplemented  by  carefully  worked-out  menus 
of  what  we  may,  and  carefully  compiled  lists 
of  what  we  may  not,  eat. 

If,  however  (from  the  personal  contexts  of 
your  own  preconceptions  and  desires),  you 
have  read  any  such  expectation  out  of  the 
title  of  this  volume,  it  is  only  right  that  I 
should,  in  advance,  disabuse  your  mind  of  the 
false  hope. 

I  do  not  propose  to  tell  you  that  you  must 
always,  in  reading,  let  the  light  fall  on  your 
book  from  behind,  over  your  shoulder;  that 
you  should  avoid  stories  of  thrilling  adventure 
and  should  pick  out  theological  essays  when 
you  are  trying  to  read  yourself  to  sleep  o' 
nights:  that  half  an  hour,  morning  and  eve- 
ning, is  all  that  you  ought  to  devote  to  the  daily 
papers;  and  that  you  should  keep  a  small  edi- 
tion of  the  classics  in  your  coat  pocket  to  read 
while  you  are  waiting  in  line  at  the  box  office 
of  the  movie-theater.    I  am  not  even  going 

54 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

to  divulge  to  you  that  legendary  secret  of 
the  professional  "reader,"  —  that  sea  serpent 
among  trade  tricks,  —  by  which  it  is  said  that 
the  initiated  are  enabled  to  take  in  whole 
paragraphs  and  even  whole  pages  of  print  at  a 
glance;  instead  of  plodding  along,  sentence  by 
sentence,  after  the  manner  of  the  untaught. 

This  volume,  in  short,  contains  no  royal 
road  to  learning  —  not  even  learning  to  read. 
It  contains  a  scenario  which  you,  as  my  partner 
of  the  moment,  are  invited  to  "produce"  —  the 
scenario  of  an  inquiry,  leading  to  conclusions. 

If  you  are  inclined  to  protest  that  such  a 
scenario  must  necessarily  be  lacking  in  ex- 
citement and  essentially  undramatic,  I  can 
only  assure  you  that  you  are  wrong.  An  in- 
quiry is  first  cousin  to  a  detective  story.  A 
conclusion  may  be  the  most  thrilling  of  de- 
nouements. And  no  scenario  of  exploration, 
not  even  one  that  leads  us  to  the  sources  of 
the  Orinoco  or  lands  us  in  the  heart  of  Thibet, 
can  be  fuller  of  adventure,  and  more  fraught 
with  surprises  and  flavored  with  the  wine  of 
astonishment,  than  a  voyage  of  investigation 
in  that  hermit  kingdom  —  one's  own  mind. 

If   you   protest   further   that   you    prefer 

55 


HOW  TO  READ 

Romance,  that  you  like  to  have  your  villains 
come  up  with  and  all  the  nice  people  married 
off  in  the  last  chapter,  I  can  only  assure  you 
that  in  every  chapter  of  this  book  one  of 
the  most  tricky  and  treacherous  villains  —  a 
false  Notion  —  will  be  pursued  and  cornered 
and  run  through  the  vitals;  that  two  Ideas  of 
romantic  proclivities  (and  of  thoroughly  eu- 
genic antecedents),  which  have  been  kept 
from  mating  by  this  villain  aforesaid,  will  be 
led  to  the  altar;  and  that  the  happiness-ever- 
after  of  these  successive  couples  will  be 
proved  by  the  fact  that  the  next  chapter  will 
deal  with  their  children. 

If  you  still  shrug  your  shoulders  and  say  that 
this  would  appear  to  be  a  scenario  for  high- 
brows, I  can  only  assure  you  that  —  quite  on 
the  contrary  —  it  is  a  scenario  for  human  be- 
ings; that  it  is  for  —  because  it  is  about  — 
you  and  me  and  the  man  next  door. 

Moreover,  the  plan  of  this  scenario  is  very 
simple.  First,  it  proposes  to  induce  you  (not 
through  my  eyes,  but  through  your  own)  to 
see  just  hozv,  whether  we  ever  analyze  the 
process  or  not,  we  all  must  and  all  do  read. 
Next,  it  proposes  to  induce  you,  in  similar 

56 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

manner,  to  see  just  why,  whether  we  are  con- 
scious of  the  reasons  or  not,  we  any  of  us  ever 
read  at  all.  And  finally,  having  led  you  to 
recognize  for  yourself  the  inherent  limitations 
of  this  universal  method  of  reading,  and  the 
latent  possibilities  that  hide  for  each  of  us  be- 
hind this  universal  desire  to  read,  it  proposes 
to  induce  you  (out  of  your  understanding,  not 
out  of  mine)  to  formulate  for  yourself  that  at- 
titude toward  reading  that  alone  will  enable 
you  intelligently  and  consciously  to  adapt 
the  means  at  hand  to  the  development  and 
furthering  of  your  personal  purposes. 

ii 

We  have  already,  in  the  preceding  chap- 
ters, seen  something  of  the  unsuspected  proc- 
esses by  which  we  actually  do  read.  We 
have  located  and  identified  the  sources  we 
draw  upon  for  the  scenery,  the  animals,  the 
human  characters,  and  the  intellectual  con- 
ceptions, in  terms  of  which  we  "produce"  an 
author's  scenario  for  ourselves.  And  we  have 
located  and  identified  the  sources  we  draw 
upon  for  the  meanings  of  the  words  in  which 
these  scenarios  are  written. 

57 


HOW  TO  READ 

But  as  yet,  in  spite  of  our  assumptions  to 
the  contrary,  we  would  appear  to  be  mere 
creatures  of  chance,  helplessly  dependent  (for 
material  to  read  with)  upon  the  first  memory- 
picture,  or  the  first  word-meaning  that  our 
minds  get  hold  of  when  they  reach  into  the 
grab-bag  of  our  past  experience. 

And  to  a  certain  extent  we  are. 

If  I  suddenly  present  for  your  interpreta- 
tion the  words 

A  green  tree 

not  only  do  I  not  know  what  picture  your 
mind  will  present  you  with,  but  you  are  as 
ignorant,  before  the  event,  as  I  am,  and  as 
powerless  to  control  the  choice.  Your  mind 
simply  reaches  down  into  the  "green  tree" 
compartment  of  your  stored  experience  and 
fetches  up  whatever  comes  handy: —  a  "gen- 
eralized notion,"  or  the  elm  tree  in  front  of 
your  childhood  home,  or  a  banyan  monster  in 
Madras,  or  what-not. 

And  yet,  in  the  last  chapter,  we  summed  up 
our  inquiry,  as  far  as  prosecuted,  in  the  con- 
clusion (and  I  assume  that  you  acquiesced  in 
it  at  the  time)  that  learning  to  read  did  not 

58 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

merely  mean  learning  to  draw  "more  and 
more  skillfully"  on  our  stored  experience  for 
scenario  producing  purposes,  but  also  involved 
enlarging  our  "personal  contexts,"  develop- 
ing our  responsiveness  to  verbal  contexts,  and 
"learning  to  draw  more  and  more  discriminat- 
ingly on  these  two  sources  for  the  word-mean- 
ings in  which  we  interpret  the  directions  that 
our  successive  partners,  the  authors,  issue  to 
us." 

It  is  now  necessary  for  us  to  discover  how 
■ —  by  what  actually  employed  process  or  pro- 
cedure —  we  achieve  and  exercise  this  critical 
selection. 

I  assume  that,  in  reading  the  last  chapter, 
you  personally  acquiesced  in  its  conclusions. 
Yet  I  can  imagine  you,  after  a  little  reflection, 
addressing  me  somewhat  as  follows:  "That 
first  chapter  on  'Learning  to  Read'  was  fine. 
All  it  said  about  our  minds  being  moving- 
picture  concerns;  about  printed  stories  being 
nothing  but  scenarios;  about  our  only  mate- 
rial for  their  'producing'  being  our  own  ex- 
perience;—  all  this  is  not  only  astonishingly 
plain,  once  it  has  been  pointed  out,  but  it  in- 
stantly gives  to  the  whole  idea  of  reading  a 

59 


HOW  TO  READ 

prt  of  exciting  interest.  And  the  second  chap- 
ter, too,  taken  by  itself,  is  convincing.  In- 
deed, I  Ve  tried  the  thing  out  on  myself  and  it 
works.  The  'dictionary  meanings'  of  words 
are  only  definitions  of  generalized  notions.  I 
do  get  the  meanings  of  used  words  from  the 
contexts,  verbal  and  'personal.'  And  yet  I 
can't,  for  the  life  of  me,  make  these  two  chap- 
ters hitch  up.  I  don't  see  how  I  can  be  ex- 
pected to  make  'nicely  discriminated'  word- 
meanings  for  myself  unless  I  superintend  the 
process  as  I  go  along.  But  if  I  stop  to  examine 
the  meanings  I  am  giving  to  words  as  I  read 
them,  then  I  find  that  I  can't  'read.'  Instead 
of  a  'mental  movie,'  or  anything  resembling 
one,  I  get  nothing  but  a  jumble  of  unrelated 
meanings,  memories,  associations,  and  ideas. 
Are  you  sure  you  are  right?  Or  have  I  some- 
how gotten  off  the  track?" 

in 

Suppose  we  examine  the  mental  mechanics 
of  reading  a  little  more  closely  —  watch  the 
wheels  go  round  a  bit  —  and  see  if  we  cannot 
clear  these  matters  up.  It  is  n't  a  difficult  job 
if  we  go  about  it  right.  And  these  questions  — ■ 

60 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

(i)  Why  is  it  impracticable  te  "examine  the  mean- 
ings we  are  giving  to  words  as  we  read  them?" 

(2)  Why  is  it  impossible  to  "  read  "  if  we  do  stop  to 
examine  the  meanings  we  are  giving  to  individ- 
ual words? 

(3)  What  is  the  actual  way  in  which  we  do  control 
our  word  interpretations? 

—  are  of  greater  importance  than  appears  on 
the  surface.  They  strike,  as  it  happens,  to  the 
very  root  of  our  inquiry.  Indeed,  the  answer 
to  the  third  of  them  is  the  root  of  our  inquiry; 
and  is  going,  therefore,  to  acquire  far-reaching 
significance  for  us. 

IV 

Let  us  glance  back  for  a  moment  at  the 
cinematograph. 

You  know,  of  course,  that  a  motion-picture 
film  is  made  up  of  a  great  number  of  individ- 
ual photographs.  That  these  were  originally 
taken  separately,  but  in  rapid  succession. 
That  they  are  thrown  on  the  screen,  also 
separately,  and  in  the  original  order,  and  at 
the  original  rapid  rate  —  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
at  the  rate  of  about  twenty  per  second.  And 
you  quite  understand  (although  you  cannot 

61 


HOW  TO  READ 

detect  the  fact  for  yourselves  by  observation) 
that  It  is  precisely  because  each  of  these  sepa- 
rate pictures  is  actually  there,  stationary,  on 
the  screen,  long  enough  for  us  to  perceive  it, 
yet  is  always  succeeded  by  another  picture 
(ever  so  slightly  different)  too  quickly  for  us 
to  differentiate  the  impressions  we  receive 
from  them,  that  the  series  merges,  to  our 
minds,  into  a  "moving  picture." 

Now  the  significant  fact  that  I  wish  to 
point  out  to  you  —  the  fact  that  is  going  to 
enable  us  to  "hitch  up"  our  previous  discov- 
eries to  the  facts  of  actual  reading  practice 
■ —  is  this:  that  the  separate  words  on  a  page 
of  print  correspond  exactly  to  the  separate 
pictures  of  a  movie  film. 

It  is  not  merely  true  in  a  sort  of  meta- 
phorical sense  that "  reading "  results  in  "men- 
tal movies." 

It  is  literally  true  that  the  mental  mechan- 
ics of  the  two  processes  are  identical. 

Let  us  examine  them. 

The  cinematograph  is  operated  at  the  rate 
of  about  twenty  pictures  per  second.  In  other 
words,  in  one  minute  of  the  movies  something 
like  twelve  hundred  pictures,  one  after  the 

62 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

other,  twenty  to  the  second,  are  thrown  on 
the  screen  before  our  eyes. 

On  the  other  hand,  an  ordinary  reader 
takes  about  a  minute  to  read  an  average 
page  of  the  usual  novel.  Such  a  page  con- 
tains in  the  neighborhood  of  three  hundred 
words.  Which  is  to  say  that  in  one  minute  of 
"reading"  something  like  three  hundred 
words,  one  after  the  other,  five  to  the  sec- 
ond, are  flashed  onto  the  sensitized  screen  of 
the  mind. 

And,  in  this  case  as  in  the  other,  it  is  pre- 
cisely because  each  of  these  words  is  there, 
stationary,  before  our  moving  eyes,  just  long 
enough  for  us  to  feel  the  flavor  of  its  signifi- 
cance, but  is  always  —  before  we  have  time  to 
differentiate  the  impressions  made  on  us  — 
abandoned  for  another  word,  different,  yet 
either  qualifying  or  qualified  by  the  first  one, 
that  the  series  merges  in  our  minds  into  the 
living  flux  of  "representation"  or  "under- 
standing" that  we  call  "reading,"  and  that 
we  have  elected  to  describe  as  a  "mental 
movie." 

Here,  then,  are  our  first  two  points  already 
clear  to  us:  — 

63 


HOW  TO  READ 

(i)  At  five  words  to  the  second,  it  is  obviously  im- 
possible to  "examine  the  meanings  we  are  giv- 
ing to  the  words  as  we  read  them." 

(2)  Yet  if,  in  order  to  make  such  an  examination 
possible,  we  slow  down  to,  say,  ten  words  to  the 
minute,  we  instantly  destroy  the  cinemato- 
graphic effect  of  the  merged  series.  Instead 
of  a  "mental  movie"  we  get  a  "jumble  of  un- 
related meanings,  memories,  associations  and 
ideas." 

In  exactly  the  same  way,  if  we  slow  a  movie 
film  down  until  each  picture  remains  on  the 
screen  for  two  whole  seconds,  and  is  then, 
after  an  interval  of  darkness,  succeeded,  for 
two  whole  seconds  more,  by  the  next  picture, 
we  instantly  turn  a  "moving  picture"  into  a 
procession  of  meaningless  monotony. 

In  both  cases  we  have  a  watched  pot  that 
never  boils. 

v 

Of  course  this  seems  to  land  us  in  a  vicious 
circle  —  in  a  sort  of  mouse-trap  cylinder  in 
which  we  go  round  and  round  without  ever 
getting  any  forwarder. 

Fortunately,  however,  there  is  a  way  out. 
There  is  a  door  to  the  trap.    There  is  a  very 

64 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

practical  way  in  which  we  not  only  can,  but  in 
actual  practice  frequently  do,  examine  and 
control  the  meanings  we  give  to  the  words  we 
read. 

This  method  is  so  simple,  so  natural,  so 
unnotedly  habitual  to  us,  that  you  will  laugh 
when  I  point  it  out.  You  use  it  constantly. 
But  you  use  it  so  instinctively,  so  thought- 
lessly, and  with  so  little  realization  of  funda- 
mental relationship,  not  only  to  what  we  are 
now  discussing,  but  to  all  living,  that  I  am 
sure  you  do  not  know  what  it  is.  Nor,  for 
the  moment,  am  I  going  to  tell  you.  There 
is,  as  it  happens,  a  small  matter  of  detail  that 
we  must  master  first. 

VI 

We  now  understand  (although  we  cannot 
detect  the  matter  for  ourselves  by  observa- 
tion) that  we  "  read  "  by  carrying  a  "  flavor  of 
significance"  forward  from  each  printed  word 
and  blending  it  with  the  "flavors  of  signifi- 
cance" we  take  from  the  words  that  follow. 

The  things  that  we  are  wanting  a  means  of 
controlling,  therefore,  are  really  "flavors  of 
significance." 

65 


HOW  TO  READ 

But  what,  in  the  name  of  all  that  is  practical 
and  thinkable,  may  such  a  thing  as  a  "flavor 
of  significance"  look  like? 

What,  as  a  matter  of  cold  fact,  is  a  "flavor 
of  significance?" 

Let  us  see  if  we  can  find  out. 

VII 

Suppose,  in  actual  conversation,  I  were  to 
ask  you  the  meaning  of  the  word  "good." 

You  would  instantly  feel  that  you  knew. 
But  you  would  find  considerable  difficulty  in 
framing  a  reply  that  either  of  us  considered 
satisfactory.  And  this  (although  the  inabil- 
ity would  doubtless  embarrass  you)  is  really 
quite  as  it  should  be.  You  are  a  human  being, 
not  a  dictionary.  It  is  your  regular  business 
to  feel  the  notions  called  up  in  your  mind  by 
code-signals  like  "good."  It  is  not  your  regu- 
lar business  to  frame  adequate  definitions  of 
those  notions  in  other  code-signals. 

But,  even  in  the  matter  of  feeling  mean- 
ings to  yourself,  a  time  element  enters.  You 
do  not,  instantly,  feel  the  full  meaning,  to 
you,  of  the  word  "good."  To  do  this  would 
take  time.   Not  much  time,  but  some.   Time 

66 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

enough,  let  us  say,  to  feel  all  the  way  round  the 
word. 

It  does  n't  take  you  long  to  feel  round  a 
concrete  word  like  "hairbrush."  It  takes  you 
some  time  to  feel  round  an  abstract  word  like 
"  unrighteousness." 

Try  it  and  see. 

Your  mind  goes  round  "hairbrush"  like  a 
squirrel  round  a  tree.  A  frisk  of  its  tail  and  — ■ 
it's  looking  at  you  from  the  other  side.  But 
your  mind  feels  its  way  round  "unrighteous- 
ness" like  a  blindfolded  man  using  his  hands 
for  eyes.  It  may  be  ten  seconds  before  it  comes 
out  with  a  full  report. 

Let  us  say,  then,  that  it  takes  us,  on  the 
average,  two  seconds  to  feel  the  full  meaning, 
to  us,  of  a  word. 

It  follows,  does  it  not,  that  in  reading  at 
the  rate  of  five  words  to  the  second,  we  have, 
on  the  average,  and  as  the  equivalent  of  our 
"flavor  of  significance,"  about  one  tenth  of  a 
fully  realized  meaning  to  carry  forward  from 
each  word  we  read. 

Let  us  see,  now,  if  we  can  find  a  magnifying 
glass  that  will  enable  us  to  see,  not  a  tenth  of  a 
fully  realized  meaning,  —  that  would  require  a 

67 


HOW  TO  READ 

microscope,  —  but,  say,  a  quarter  or  a  fifth  of 
such  a  meaning. 

VIII 

Suppose,  instead  of  asking  you  the  meaning 
of  a  word,  I  were  to  ask  you  to  play  a  game 
with  me. 

Suppose  I  were  to  ask  you  to  speak  out  to 
me,  frankly,  immediately,  and  automatically, 
—  that  is,  without  thinking  the  matter  over 
at  all,  —  the  very  first  thing  that  popped  into 
your  head  as  each  of  a  series  of  words  was 
spoken  to  you,  slowly,  one  after  the  other. 

Thus,  if  I  were  to  give  you  the  word  "cow," 
you  would  answer  "red,"  or  "calf,"  or  "Jer- 
sey," or  "milk,"  or  whatever  notion  came  up 
automatically  to  your  mind  at  the  instant  of 
hearing  the  word. 

As  a  matter  of  actual  fact,  if  you  are  of  av- 
erage quickness  in  your  mental  reactions,  you 
could,  for  ordinary  words,  and  after  a  little 
practice,  give  me  my  answers  in  from  seven  to 
nine  tenths  of  a  second.  That  is  to  say,  you 
could,  on  the  average,  answer  me  in  eight 
tenths  of  a  second.  And  as  at  least  half  of 
this  time  would  be  taken  up  in  making  your 

68 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 


reply,  each  answer  would,  roughly  speaking, 
represent  two  fifths  of  a  second's  realization  of 
that  word's  full  meaning  to  you,  or  (since  it 
takes  two  seconds,  on  the  average,  to  attain 
such  a  realization  complete)  one  fifth  of  a  fully 
realized  meaning. 

Now,  suppose  that  T  -*. .  \  1  to  select  six  words 
at  random.  And  suppose  that  I  were  to  pro- 
pound them,  in  this  fashion,  first  to  one,  and 
then  to  another  of  you ;  and  in  each  case  were  to 
write  down  the  answers.  The  record  of  words 
and  answers  would  read  somewhat  as  follows: 


Second  Player's 
Answer 
Wash 
Carve 
Pie 
Hot 
Charlie 
Break 


First  Player's 

Word  Answer 

Water  Wet 

Knife  Sharp 

Good  Mother 

Pepper  Salt 

Blond  Hair 

Bond  Coupon 

Here,  then,  —  crudely  exaggerated  by  the 
action  of  a  rough  magnifying  medium,  and 
thus  rendered,  as  it  were,  visible  to  the  actual 
eye,  —  are  some  fractions  of  realized  mean- 
ings; some  "flavors  of  significance,"  coarser 
than  those  we  read  with,  but  yet  akin  to  them. 

We  have  only  to  examine  them,  for  in- 

69 


HOW  TO  READ 

stance,  to  see  that  player  number  one  would, 
at  the  moment  of  the  test,  have  been  likely 
to  carry  forward  from  the  word  "good" 
a  "mother-goodness"  flavor  of  significance; 
and  player  number  two  a  "pie-goodness" 
flavor  of  significance. 

Perhaps,  if  we  try,  we  can  make  this  list 
give  us  an  answer  to  our  third  question. 

IX 

We  see  that  to  player  number  one,  at  the 
moment  of  the  test,  the  word  "bond"  sug- 
gested investments;  while  to  player  number 
two  it  suggested  a  desire  for  freedom.  We 
can,  therefore,  conceive  that,  had  they  been 
reading,  player  number  one  would  have  car- 
ried forward  from  the  word  "bond"  a  money- 
satisfaction  flavor,  and  player  number  two  a 
dis s atisj action-with-slavery  flavor. 

But  these  would  scarcely  prove  suitable 
flavors  of  significance  for  the  same  word  in 
the  same  sentence.  One  of  them  —  possibly 
even  both  of  them  —  would  need  to  be  criti- 
cized and  "controlled." 

How,  in  actual  reading,  would  these  two 
players  accomplish  the  adjustment? 

70 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

Let  us  suppose  a  case. 
Let   us    suppose   that    the   sentence   they 
were  reading  began  — 

The  bond  that  held  them  together  — 

By  the  time  that  they  had  read  thus  far, 
player  number  one  would  be  carrying  for- 
ward a  sort  of  "comfortable-circumstances" 
attitude  toward  the  union.  And  player  number 
two  would  be  carrying  forward  a  sort  of 
"readiness-for-divorce"  attitude  toward  it. 

And  now  suppose  that  the  balance  of  the 
sentence  ran  — 

was  thus  a  spiritual  tie. 

Instantly,  both  readers  would  find  themselves 
"in  wrong." 

And  instantly,  by  a  mental  gesture,  —  a 
mere  motion  of  the  mind,  —  so  familiar  and 
instinctive  as  to  be  all  but  unconscious,  each 
would  make  his  or  her  own  personal  correc- 
tion. 

x 

Here,  then,  we  have  our  third  question 
cleared  up  for  us. 

We  control  our  "flavors  of  significance"  by 

71 


HOW  TO  READ 

hindsight,  not  by  foresight.  We  do  not  cut 
them  to  measure.  We  get  them  ready-made,  and 
refit  them  when  necessary. 

And  for  the  most  part  no  readjustments  are 
needed.  For,  after  all,  word-meanings  are  by 
no  means  haphazard  hand-me-downs.  Each 
of  us  has,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  and  for  every 
word  really  contained  in  his  vocabulary,a  more 
or  less  richly  composite  meaning-notion  of  his 
own,  —  a  personal  generalization,  —  built  up 
by  slow  degrees  and  repeated  usings.  And  it 
is  into  these  composites,  as  into  grab-bags, 
that  we  really  reach  —  reach  at  the  rate  of 
five  times  per  second  —  for  personal  "flavors 
of  significance"  that  shall  fit  the  verbal  con- 
text. 

It  is  n't  often,  therefore,  that  our  minds 
bring  up  for  us  such  incongruous  and  un- 
usable flavors  of  meaning  as  those  just  ex- 
amined in  the  case  of  the  word  "bond." 

In  an  overwhelming  majority  of  cases,  the 
"meanings"  we  pull  out  are  adequate.  And 
even  in  the  other  cases,  the  needed  readjust- 
ments are  usually  slight  and  are  made  in- 
stinctively, without  conscious  thought,  and 
almost  instantly  forgotten. 

72 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

But  the  more  alert  the  reader  is  (and  es- 
pecially the  more  alert  he  is  on  this  basis  of 
right  understanding  of  the  nature  of  our  read- 
ing processes),  the  more  frequently  will  he 
detect  these  errors  and  inadequacies,  and 
the  more  often  will  he  make  these  mental 
gestures  of  correction.  And  each  time  that  he 
does  so  he  increases  the  suppleness  of  his 
mind,  betters  his  technical  skill  of  interpreta- 
tion, adds  permanently  to  the  richness  of  that 
particular  word-meaning  composite,  and,  in 
all  these  ways,  strengthens  the  foundations  of 
efficiency  for  his  future  reading. 

XI 

Alertness,  then,  is  the  first  requisite  for  the 
reader.  And  by  "alertness"  I  mean,  here, 
expectant  interest,  focused  attention,  and  a 
mental  readiness  to  act. 

XII 

But  before  I  go  on  to  point  out  the  particu- 
lar character  and  type  of  alertness  demanded 
of  the  reader  by  the  reading-facts  we  have  es- 
tablished thus  far  in  our  inquiry,  I  want  to 
clear  your  mind  of  a  misconception  that  we 

73 


HOW  TO  READ 

are  forever  entertaining,  like  a  bad  angel,  unv 
awares. 

We  are  all  of  us  given  to  thinking  of  "read- 
ing" as  of  a  comparatively  recent  human 
attainment,  based  upon  the  invention  of 
graphic  signs. 

In  reality,  however,  reading  is  not  an  at- 
tainment, but  a  natural  function  and  inborn 
aptitude  of  the  mind. 

A  thousand  centuries  before  alphabets 
were,  reading  was. 

Semi-human  hunters  read  the  incised  records 
of  the  game  trails  before  they  had  even  learned 
to  cook  the  flesh  of  their  quarry.  Immemori- 
ally  forgotten  savages  read  the  faces  of  their 
friends  and  the  minds  of  their  enemies  before 
the  stone  age  was  dreamed  of.  Prehistoric 
precursors  of  the  prophets  read  the  signs  of 
the  weather  in  the  skies,  and  their  still  pre- 
historic successors  became  priests  and  read 
the  Will  of  God  in  their  own  hearts,  untold 
ages  before  the  first  cuneiform  inscription  was 
impressed  on  the  first  brick  in  Babylonia. 

Nor  are  these  expressions  mere  figures  of 
speech.  It  is  a  "simile"  only  by  inversion  to 
call  "reading  the  signs  of  the  times"  a  simile. 

74 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

The  real  simile  lies  rather  in  speaking  of 
"  reading  a  book."  For  the  word  "  read  "  (to  go 
no  further  back  than  its  immediate  parent)  is 
an  Anglo-Saxon  word  meaning  to  "  take  coun- 
sel." And  its  linguistic  first  cousin  is  that 
other  ancient  expression,  "to  red  up," — to 
"red"  meaning  to  tidy,  to  put  in  order;  and 
hence  to  clear  up  and  explain.  "Reading," 
then,  is  a  form  of  "redding,"  —  to  take  coun- 
sel by  putting  things  in  order.  And  you  can  no 
more  (without  smothering  it  to  death)  keep 
the  human  mind  from  "reading"  than  you 
can  keep  the  human  body  from  breathing. 
And  you  will  note  that  for  all  forms  of  reading 
—  for  that  of  the  semi-human  hunter  no  less 
than  for  that  to  which  this  book  is  intended 
to  guide  you  —  alertness  (meaning  expect- 
ant interest,  focused  attention,  and  a  mental 
readiness  to  act)  is  the  first  requisite. 

XIII 

In  this  volume  we  are  dealing  with  reading 
in  its  everyday  sense  of  reading  letters,  news- 
papers, magazines,  and  books — written  and 
printed  language  in  general.  And  even  in  this 
sense   it  is  practically  permissible  to-day  to 

75 


HOW  TO  READ 

say  that  "everybody  reads."  It  is  also  true 
that  whatever  actual  reading  any  of  us  do  is 
accomplished  by  the  exercise  of  some  alertness. 
For  one  no  more  reads  a  page  of  print  by 
mechanically  passing  one's  eyes  across  and 
across  its  lines,  and  perhaps  silently  forming 
the  words  with  one's  lips,  while  one's  mind  is 
playing  hide  and  seek  elsewhere,  than  one 
reads  a  game  trail  by  following  it,  eyes  on  the 
ground  ticking  off  deer  tracks,  but  mind  and 
imagination  walking  up  Broadway. 

Let  us  be  clear  about  this. 

It  happens  to  all  of  us,  at  times,  to  discover 
that,  while  we've  imagined  we  were  reading, 
we  really  were  n't;  to  find,  on  turning  over  a 
page,  that  we've  no  idea  as  to  what  was  on  it. 
Generally,  in  such  cases,  if  we  take  the  trouble 
to  examine  our  own  minds,  we  find  that  while 
we  were  automatically  going  through  the 
mental  and  physical  motions  of  reading,  we 
were  really  being  lazily  and  undirectedly 
alert  about  something  else  —  going  over  the 
month's  accounts,  or  wondering  why  some 
friend  acted  so  offish  when  we  last  met. 

Again,  it  sometimes  happens  to  all  of  us  to 
realize,  on  turning  over  a  page,  that  a  single 

76 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

sentence  on  it,  say  three  quarters  of  the  way 
up  from  the  bottom,  is  the  only  thing  on  it 
that  we  seem  really  to  have  taken  in.  If  we 
turn  back  and  read  the  sentence  over  again, 
we  can  generally  discover  exactly  what  it  was 
that  caused  our  minds  to  stop  wool-gathering 
for  an  instant  and  roused  us  to  a  half-hearted 
and  momentary  alertness. 

XIV 

For  right  reading,  however,  it  is  not  enough 
to  be  alert. 

The  alertness  must  be  both  informed  and 
disciplined.   It  must  be  based  on  understand- 
ing and  trained  to  the  point  of  unconscious  . 
performance. 

Let  me  illustrate  this  last  statement. 

I  said,  awhile  back,  that  the  mind  "reads" 
as  naturally  as  the  body  breathes.  Yet  the 
first  thing  that  a  would-be  opera  singer  has  to 
learn  is  how  to  breathe.  It  is  n't  enough  that 
she  breathe  naturally.  Her  breathing  must  be 
both  informed  and  disciplined.  She  must 
understand  both  the  mechanism  at  her  dis- 
posal and  the  purposes  of  its  employment. 
And  she  must  so  train  herself  in  the  technique 

77 


HOW  TO  READ 

of  performance  that  her  lungs  function  with- 
out conscious  thought  for  the  adequate 
achievement  of  her  changing  personal  aims. 

xv 

Or,  let  us  take  a  cruder  analogy. 

Alertness  is  a  prerequisite  in  driving  an 
automobile.  But  it  is  not  enough  to  be  alert. 
Here,  too,  the  alertness  must  be  both  informed 
and  disciplined:  based  on  understanding  and 
trained  to  the  point  of  unconscious  perform- 
ance. 

The  kind  of  alertness  that  grasps  the  steer- 
ing wheel  so  tightly  as  to  breed  cramps  in  the 
wrists  is  more  of  a  handicap  than  a  help.  Yet 
this  stage  —  the  stage  of  exaggeratedly  con- 
scious alertness  —  has  to  be  passed  through. 

The  kind  of  alertness  that  is  so  preoccupied 
with  technique  that  it  keeps  telling  itself 
which  pedal  to  push  in  an  emergency  is  also 
more  of  a  handicap  than  a  help.  But  this 
stage  —  the  stage  of  reducing  conscious  per- 
formance to  a  subconscious  habit  —  must 
also  be  passed  through. 

The  driver  who  is  ignorant  of  the  mechan- 
ism of  his  engine  keeps  going  by  the  grace  of 

78 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

God  —  or  of  some  man  in  Detroit,  Michigan. 
But  the  driver  whose  mind  is  busy  with  his 
engine  when  he  is  threading  the  intricacies  of 
traffic  is  likely  to  get  into  trouble  with  the 
police. 

No  one  is  master  of  the  automobile  —  no 
one  is  capable  of  driving  one  entirely  "on  his 
own,"  anywhere  that  it  will  go  for  the  ac- 
complishment of  his  own  ends,  to  the  full  of 
its  inherent  possibilities  and  to  the  limit  of  his 
own  capacity — until  he  has  gradually  built 
up,  on  a  constantly  broadening  basis  of  un- 
derstanding, —  understanding  of  the  working 
of  internal-combustion  engines  in  general,  of 
the  idiosyncracies  of  his  own  machine  in 
particular,  of  the  rules  of  the  road,  of  the 
psychology  of  other  drivers  and  of  himself, 
and  of  the  character  of  his  own  pursuit,  —  an 
alertness  that  is  seldom  conscious  of  itself,  yet 
always  many-sidedly  operative,  and  that  is 
usually  able,  by  becoming  conscious  of  itself, 
to  detect  the  causes  of  its  own  shortcomings, 
and  by  correcting  these  to  add  to  its  own  ef- 
frciency. 


79 


HOW  TO  READ 


XVI 

And  it  is  no  otherwise  with  reading. 

It  is  only  by  thus  building  up,  on  a  con- 
stantly broadening  basis  of  understanding, 
an  informed  and  disciplined  alertness,  that 
we  learn  to  drive  that  other  internal-combus- 
tion engine,  our  own  mind,  along  the  roads  of 
print  toward  our  chosen  objective  —  be  this 
an  afternoon's  enjoyment  or  an  intellectual 
goal. 

XVII 

Do  not,  however,  mistake  me.  The  most 
ordinary  reader  exercises  alertness.  He  has  to 
in  order  to  read.  Some  measure  of  expectant 
interest,  no  matter  how  slight;  some  degree  of 
focused  attention,  no  matter  how  vague; 
some  mental  readiness  to  act,  no  matter  how 
sluggish,  he  must  bring  to  the  task.  Else  the 
very  act  of  reading  ceases  to  take  place. 

But  the  ordinary  reader,  because  he  mis- 
understands the  nature  of  reading,  misdirects 
these  elements  of  alertness;  if,  indeed,  he 
directs  them  at  all. 

The  ordinary  reader  thinks  of  a  story  as  a 

So 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

concrete  thing  contained  in  a  book,  just  as  he 
thinks  of  a  lemonade  as  a  concrete  thing  con- 
tained in  a  glass.  And  he  assumes  that,  just 
as  he  sucks  the  one  in,  ready-mixed,  through  a 
straw,  so  he  drinks  the  other  in,  ready-made, 
through  his  eyes. 

Naturally,  his  expectant  interest  is  centered 
on  "what  the  author  has  to  say."  His  at- 
tention is  focused  outside  himself.  His  mental 
readiness  to  act  is  largely  reduced  to  a  readi- 
ness to  suck  faster  if  he  likes  it  and  to  suck 
slower  if  he  does  n't. 

And  —  I  want  to  underscore  this  fact  — 
the  thing  works.  It  does  n't  work  the  way  he 
supposes,  but  it  arrives  —  after  a  fashion.  He 
reads,  not  because  he  understands  what  he  is 
doing,  but  because  he  is  built  that  way.  He 
keeps  going,  as  we  said  of  the  auto-driver,  by 
the  grace  of  God.  If  it  were  really  true,  as  the 
proverb  seems  to  imply,  that  God  helps  only 
those  who  help  themselves,  we  should  most 
of  us  be  stalled  motors  by  the  wayside. 

XVIII 

But  really  "learning  to  read"  is  another 
matter. 

81 


HOW  TO  READ 

And  the  reader  who  has  once  grasped  in 
outline  the  true  nature  of  reading,  and  who 
wishes  to  build  up  for  himself  on  that  founda- 
tion a  better  and  more  personally  remunera- 
tive technique,  should  begin  by  altering  the 
character  of  his  alertness. 

He  knows  that  the  words  the  author  prints 
are  but  signals  to  his  mind  —  but  push- 
buttons that  his  eyes  press  as  they  pass  over 
them.  He  knows  that  the  flux  of  "notions" 
they  call  up,  the  associative  memories,  and 
mental  pictures,  and  character  conceptions, 
and  idea  complexes,  that  these  form  them- 
selves into,  are  his  word-notions,  his  memo- 
ries, his  mind  pictures,  his  character  con- 
ceptions, his  idea  constructions.  And  he 
will,  therefore,  practice  centering  his  expect- 
ant interest,  not  on  "what  the  author  is  say- 
ing," but  on  "what  the  author  is  saying  to 
him." 

He  knows,  moreover,  that  whatever  happens 
when  we  read  happens  inside  ourselves.  And 
he  will,  therefore,  practice  keeping  his  real 
attention  turned  inward. 

And  he  knows  that  he,  and  he  alone,  is  the 
one  who  can,  when  occasion  arises,  stage- 

82 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

manage  and  control  this  internal  upwelling 
of  notions  and  memories,  pictures  and  ideas. 
And  he  will,  therefore,  practice  the  develop- 
ment of  a  mental  readiness  to  act  that  con- 
sists in  readiness  to  act  as  stage  manager  on 
his  own  initiative;  adjusting  himself  as  well  as 
he  may  to  the  author's  mood,  and  producing 
to  the  best  of  his  equipment  the  author's 
scenario. 

XIX 

This,  then,  is  the  root  of  our  inquiry:  —  this 
fact  that,  in  reading,  we  deliberately  and  of 
our  own  choice  expose  ourselves  to  suggestion; 
respond  automatically  and  personally  to  the 
successive  stimuli  of  words  and  word-groups; 
and  then  consciously  or  unconsciously  criticize 
and  control  our  automatic  responses. 

This  (although  he  does  n't  know  it)  is 
what  the  tramp  on  a  park  bench,  scanning 
the  draggled  pages  of  last  week's  paper,  is 
doing. 

And  this  is  all  that  the  keenest  mind  in 
Christendom  does  when  it  reads. 

The  road  between  the  two,  as  far  as  mere 
technique  goes,  lies  along  the  line  of  teaching 

83 


HOW  TO  READ 

one's  self  little  by  little  to  do  this  common  act 
of  reading  with  an  informed  and  disciplined 
alertness;  an  alertness  based  on  a  constantly 
broadening  understanding  of  one's  own  mind- 
workings  and  of  one's  own  aims,  and  trained 
to  a  greater  and  greater  suppleness  of  uncon- 
scious performance. 

xx 

Before  closing  this  chapter,  however,  I  want 
to  point  out  the  importance,  in  connection 
with  all  that  follows  in  this  volume,  that  this 
discovered  method  of  our  "control"  of  word- 
meanings  is  going  to  assume  for  us. 

It  looks  an  insignificant  little  discovery  — 
this  fact  that  we  first  react  automatically  to 
words  and  then  criticize  the  reaction,  and  that 
this  is  absolutely  the  only  method  we  have, 
either  of  getting  at  our  word-meanings  (which 
are,  so  to  say,  the  molecules  of  our  thought) 
or  of  controlling  them.  And  yet,  in  reality, 
it  is  the  root  of  self-knowledge  and  the  key 
to  all  that  has  any  right  to  be  called  cul- 
ture. 

Talkers  of  cant  tell  us,  in  effect  if  not  in 
words,  that  culture  is  something  that  we  can 

84 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

receive  from  without;  something  that  exists, 
independently  of  its  possessors;  something 
that  can  be  imparted,  and  accepted,  and 
built  into  our  consciousness  and  our  person- 
alities  like  bricks  into  a  wall.  They  would 
have  us  believe  that  culture  is  a  sort  of 
censored  and  sublimated  sophistication  —  a 
knowing  (through  an  eager  submission  of  our- 
selves to  the  best  authorities)  of  what  to  feel 
and  what  not  to;  what  to  like  and  what  not  to; 
what  to  admire  and  what  not  to;  what  to 
think  and  what  not  to. 

Do  not  believe  them.  Culture  is  always 
unique,  for  it  is  an  individual  achievement  — 
a  by-product  of  personal  living. 

Its  essential  entity  is  an  "attitude  toward 
the  cosmos."  Its  component  elements  —  the 
things  from  which  it  is  built  up  —  are  recog- 
nized relationships  between  the  life  inside  us 
and  the  world  without.  And  the  ultimate 
atoms  out  of  which  these  component  elements 
are  constructed  are  neither  more  nor  less  than 
"controlled  meanings"  —  spontaneous  per- 
sonal feelings,  subsequently  criticized. 

Culture  is  a  gradually  coordinated  accumu-  . 
lation  of  criticized  reactions  —  of  the  "con-' 

8S 


HOW  TO  READ 

trolled  meanings"  that  we  ourselves  have 
given  to  hunger  and  thirst  and  satiety;  to 
love  and  friendship  and  hate;  to  hope  and 
fear  and  indifference;  to  words  and  sentences 
and  books;  to  art  and  philosophy  and  religion; 
■ —  in  a  word,  to  life. 

Much  fun  has  been  made  of  those  who  say, 
"I  don't  know  anything  about  art,  but  I 
know  what  I  like."  The  fun-makers  are  in- 
tellectual snobs,  if,  indeed,  they  are  not  shal- 
low-pated  fools.  For,  granted  that  they  them- 
selves know  anything  about  art  (and  not 
merely  about  what  they  think  they  ought  to 
think  about  it),  they  started  from  that  identi- 
cal beginning — the  beginning  of  "knowing 
what  they  liked"  and  nothing  more. 

To  "know  what  we  like"  is  nearer  to  cul- 
ture than  to  know  what  we  ought  to  like.  For 
to  know  the  latter,  beforehand,  is  often  to  be 
prevented  from  ever  knowing  whether  we 
really  like  it  or  not.  But  to  like  a  thing,  or  to 
dislike  it,  is  to  have  reacted  to  it;  to  have 
lived  with  regard  to  it;  to  have  given  it  a 
meaning.  When  we  have  criticized  this  mean- 
ing, —  when  we  have  learned  how  and  why 
we  like  it  or  dislike  it,  and  have  approved  or 

86 


WATCHING  THE  WHEELS 

disapproved  of  our   spontaneous   feeling,  — ■ 
we  have  taken  a  step  toward  culture. 

And  the  only  reason  that  culture  is  in  any- 
way derivable  from  books  is  that  reading  is  a 
form  of  living. 


CHAPTER  IV 

what's  the  use? 

I 

We  have  now  completed  the  first  portion  of 
our  inquiry.  We  have  found  out  what  reading 
really  is.  We  have  found  out  how  we  do  it. 
And  from  this  knowledge  we  have  drawn  our 
preliminary  conclusions  as  to  the  true  nature 
of  "learning  to  read"  and  as  to  the  first  steps 
necessary  for  setting  about  this  endlessly  in- 
teresting self-enhancement. 

We  have  satisfied  ourselves  that  this  learn- 
ing is  not  a  dull,  two-year  task  in  a  primary 
school,  as  usually  assumed.  We  know,  in- 
deed, that  it  is  no  once-for-all  acquirement 
(like  learning  the  Greek  alphabet  or  learning 
to  extract  cube  roots)  in  any  educational  cur- 
riculum. We  see,  on  the  contrary,  that  it  is  a 
till-death-us-do-part  sort  of  learning.  For  we 
see  that  it  consists  in  a  lifelong,  year-by-year, 
progressive  learning  to  put  the  constantly  ac- 
cumulating store  of  our  own  personal  experi- 
ence into  fuller  and  fuller  order,  by  using  it 
for  the  "producing,"  on  the  stage  of  our  own 

88 


WHAT'S  THE  USE? 

consciousness,  of  the  reported  actions,  the 
suggested  emotions,  and  the  outlined  thoughts 
of  others. 

And  from  the  vantage-point  of  this  knowl- 
edge we  begin  to  see,  opening  out  at  the  feet 
of  our  clarified  understanding,  a  deepening 
perspective  of  possibilities.  We  begin,  in  fact, 
to  realize  that  learning  to  read  is  an  adventure. 

ii 

And  of  course  the  first  result  of  this  realiza- 
tion is  a  thrill. 

We  feel  the  romance,  the  allure,  of  the  un- 
dertaking. The  vitally  personal  nature  of  it 
appeals  to  us.  The  very  fact  that  we  must 
set  out  upon  it,  like  pioneers,  dependent  upon 
our  own  original  equipment  and  upon  the 
subsequent,  day-by-day  results  of  our  own  re- 
sourcefulness, stimulates  us.  The  realization 
that  we  shall  be  setting  out  for  an  individual 
exploring  of  two  mysterious,  little-known, 
and  infinitely  exciting  worlds  —  the  world 
outside  us  and  the  world  within  —  fires  our 
imagination. 

At  first  blush  we  are  all  enthusiasm  for  the 
start. 

89 


HOW  TO  READ 


in 

But,  on  further  thought,  there  is  sure  to 
come  a  reaction. 

We  are  going,  in  this  very  chapter,  to  see 
that  two  alternating  impulses — the  impulse 
to  do,  and  the  impulse  to  shrink  from  doing 
■ —  lie  at  the  very  heart  of  all  our  living;  are, 
as  it  were,  the  beating  of  that  heart.  And  the 
strong  impulse-to-action  that  is  born  of  our 
realization  of  the  line,  adventurous  possibili- 
ties of  thus  learning  to  read  is  sure  to  be  suc- 
ceeded by  a  counter-impulse — an  impulse- 
to-inaction. 

We  see  that  this  adventure  will  be  very 
long,  and  very  slow,  and  very  likely  arduous; 
and  so  we  ask  ourselves  why  we  should  bother. 

We  see  that,  properly  prosecuted,  it  would 
inevitably  call  for  other,  less  easy,  things 
than  mere  enthusiasm:  for  patience  and  perti- 
nacity; for  the  honesty  of  humbleness;  for  the 
courage  of  self-reliance;  for  grace  as  well  as 
grit;  and  we  pause  and  ask  ourselves  if  the 
game  is  worth  the  candle. 

"This  world,"  we  say  to  ourselves,  "is  a 
busy  place.    We  are  not  specialists,  we  are 

90 


WHAT'S  THE  USE? 

'general  practitioners'  in  life.  Is  not  the  pur- 
suit of  special  knowledge,  the  attainment  of 
special  skill,  even  in  so  useful  and  universale 
thing  as  reading,  the  concern  of  the  special- 
ist?" 

And  so  we  shrug  our  shoulders  and  ask  our- 
selves, "What's  the  use?" 

IV 

Very  good.  This  is  a  legitimate  question, 
although,  as  we  shall  see  in  a  moment,  it 
probes  very  deep.  For,  since  reading  is  a  form 
of  living,  this  question,  applied  to  it,  is  but  a 
form  of  saying,  "What's  the  use — ever?" 
Perhaps,  however,  in  answering  the  reading 
form  of  this  question  we  shall  find  that  we 
have  answered  the  general  form  also. 

This  much  at  least  is  evident  to  start  with: 
we  cannot  hope  to  answer  this  reading-ques- 
tion reasonably  until  we  have  uncovered  for 
ourselves  our  real  reasons  for  reading.  And 
thus  we  are  led  directly  to  the  second  item  of 
our  projected  investigation  —  the  inquiry 
into  why  we  read. 

Suppose,  like  good  gardeners,  we  now  dig 
Straight  down  to  the  real  root  of  this  matter. 

91 


HOW  TO  READ 

v 

There  are,  at  bottom,  two  reasons,  and  only 
two  reasons  in  the  world,  why  any  of  us  ever 
read  anything. 

We  are  seldom  conscious  of  these  reasons, 
yet  we  are  always,  when  we  read,  actuated  by 
one  or  other  of  them.  It  makes  no  difference 
who  we  are  or  what  we  are;  these  reasons  and 
no  others  hold  good  for  us.  They  hold  good 
for  Hapsburgs  and  for  hoboes.  They  are  all 
the  philosopher  has,  and  Fluffy  Ruffles  has 
them. 

Nor  does  the  nature  of  the  thing  read  make 
any  difference. 

This  may  be  a  sky-sign  on  Broadway,  or  a 
signpost  at  a  country  crossroads.  It  may  be 
the  account  of  a  murder  trial  in  the  morning 
paper,  or  a  bargain-sale  notice  delivered  in  the 
afternoon  mail.  It  may  be  a  love  scene  in 
"Hearts  Aflutter"  (sixty  thousand  sold  be- 
fore publication),  or  the  chapter  on  the  Cate- 
gorical Imperative  in  Kant's  "Critique  of 
Pure  Reason"  (copyright  expired).  It  makes 
no  difference. 

Consciously  or  unconsciously,  wittingly  or 

92 


WHAT'S  THE  USE? 

unwittingly,  we  all  read  everything  that  we 
do  read  (not  according  to  its  nature,  but  ac- 
cording to  our  need)  either 

(i)  To  get  away  from  ourselves; 

or, 
(2)  To  find  ourselves. 

VI 

Yes,  I  know.  You  are  nodding  your  head 
(meaning  "aye,  aye,  sir")  over  the  first  of 
these  statements.  And,  deep  down  inside, 
you  are  thinking  that  I  am  talking  highbrow 
in  making  the  second. 

But  you  are  wrong. 

The  significance  of  these  expressions  1.3 
equally  simple,  and  the  experiences  to  which 
they  relate  are  equally  common  to  us  all. 

Wanting  to  "get  away  from  one's  self* 
merely  expresses  the  recurrent  need,  experi- 
enced by  each  one  of  us,  of  forgetting  for  a 
while  the  tangle  of  contradictory  impulses, 
mixed  motives,  cross-purposes,  and  conflict- 
ing emotions  that  is  one's  self;  and  which, 
when  too  intimately  realized,  or  too  continu- 
ously envisaged,  becomes  unbearable. 

Wanting  to  "find  one's  self"  merely  ex- 

93 


HOW  TO  READ 

presses  the  equally  recurrent  craving,  equally 
experienced  by  us  all,  actively  to  achieve 
some  measure  of  order,  no  matter  how  fleeting 
or  how  restricted,  in  the  ever-flexing  meshes 
of  this  same  internal  tangle. 

However,  this  is  a  stuffy  subject.  Let  us 
get  out  into  the  open  air. 

VII 

Just  below  my  window  as  I  write  there  is  a 
strip  of  park  that  runs  —  like  the  Gadarene 
swine  —  down  a  steep  hill  to  the  Hudson.  It 
is  some  miles  in  length,  this  strip.  But  in 
width  it  only  varies  between  a  perpendicular 
hundred  yards  and  a  shelving  quarter-mile. 
Yet  big  shade  trees  beautify  it.  And  long 
paths  parallel  the  river  through  it,  rising  and 
sinking,  on  the  swells  of  its  slopes  like  the 
wakes  of  little  boats.  And  there  are  benches 
in  it  —  benches  that  face  the  water  across 
squirrel-dotted  sweeps  of  grass.  And  there 
are  people  on  the  benches.  People  with  ba- 
bies. People  with  books.  People  with  spent 
hands  folded  in  dejected  laps.  People  with 
high  hopes  new-kindling  in  far-focused  eyes. 

Let  us   suppose  a   desperate  morning:  a 

94 


WHAT'S  THE  USE? 

morning  when  the  milkman  has  n't  come  (of 
the  blue-ribbon  chef  has  given  notice) ;  when 
the  baby  cannot  somehow  seem  to  cut  its 
tooth  (or  the  limousine  to  use  its  carburettor); 
when  Himself  has  gotten  out  of  bed  on  the 
wrong  side;  when  the  people  next  door  keep 
playing  thevictrola;  when,  in  short,  the  cos- 
mic Doll  is  just  generally  leaking  sawdust  at 
every  joint. 

Let  us  suppose  that  on  such  a  morning  a 
woman  —  yourself  or  another  —  flees  to  this 
strip  of  park  and  sits  down  on  one  of  its  green 
benches :  on  a  bench  that  looks  across  a  stretch 
of  level  lawn;  past  a  rosily  budding  oak;  past 
a  white  signboard  nailed  to  a  driven  stake; 
out  to  the  restful  river,  where  the  big  ships 
lie  at  anchor  and  the  little  shallops  come  and 

go- 

For  a  time,  her  need  —  the  need  of  escap- 
ing from  herself  —  is  ministered  to  by  the 
sheer  sensed  beauty  of  the  scene.  She  lies 
back  on  its  loveliness.  She  loses  herself  in  it. 
She  floats  on  it  like  a  grateful  swimmer  in  a 
summer  sea. 

But  not,  alas,  for  long. 

Little  meddlesome  messages  from  home  — 

95 


HOW  TO  READ 

like  Marconigrams  in  mid-Atlantic  —  begin 
to  reach  her. 

The  river  view  blurs. 

The  butcher's  bill  reasserts  itself. 

With  a  little  shudder  of  impatience  she 
turns  away  and  looks  for  a  new,  a  nearer,  a 
more  insistent  interest. 

She  watches  the  nursemaid  on  the  next 
bench  who  is  industriously  upturning  a  baby 
in  the  vain  hope  of  emptying  it  of  yells. 

She  follows  with  a  speculative  eye  a  wistful 
couple  that  come  strolling  past  with  finger 
tips  surreptitiously  touching. 

She  notes  the  growing  glory  of  the  budding 
oak  and  for  a  moment  fills  her  mind  with  that. 

And  each  of  these  things  in  turn  serves  her 
need  for  a  time,  and  then  loses  its  efficacy. 

Finally,  her  glance  lights  on  the  white  sign- 
board; but  at  first  she  only  takes  it  in  as  a 
noticeable  spot  —  a  white  rectangle  against  a 
green  background.  As  that  she  toys  with  it. 
She  moves  it  (in  her  mind)  to  the  right  and 
left;  fits  it  in,  picture-puzzle  fashion,  at  the 
foot  of  the  oak  —  plays  an  idle,  esthetic  game 
with  it. 

At  last,  she  tires  of  this  in  its  turn.    She 

96 


WHAT'S  THE  USE? 

sees  that  it  is  a  notice  board.  She  realizes 
that  there  is  printing  on  it.  She  gets  desper- 
ately up.  She  walks  slowly  over  to  it.  She 
reads  it. 

VIII 

And  what,  you  ask,  does  it  say? 
What,  I  answer,  does  it  matter? 
Perhaps  it  says,  "keep  off  the  grass." 
Perhaps  it  says,  "to  96TH  street  and  the 


GATE." 


What  does  matter,  here,  is  her  reason  for 
reading  it.  For  here,  in  its  simplest  form,  ab- 
solutely unadulterated,  "chemically  pure," 
we  have  the  first  of  our  two  impulses  toward 
reading.  This  woman  read  the  signboard  to 
get  away  from  herself. 

IX 

But  she  need  not  have. 

Suppose  that  by  ever  so  little  we  change 
our  supposition. 

Suppose  that  the  sudden  peace,  the  far 
view,  the  spring  air,  the  muted  sounds  of 
busy  life  rising  from  the  river,  prove  healing 
to  this  woman's  hurt. 

97 


HOW  TO  READ 

Suppose  that  in  consequence,  and  without 
her  conscious  knowledge,  the  tide  of  her  cour- 
age and  energy  that  had,  like  the  tide  in  the 
river,  been  running  out,  turns  and  begins  to 
"make." 

Suppose,  in  further  consequence,  that  the 
victrola  and  the  milkman,  the  baby's  tooth 
and  the  family  grouches,  the  little  puzzles  and 
big  problems  in  the  stream  of  her  life,  begin, 
like  the  anchored  barges  and  battleships  on 
the  river,  to  swing  at  their  moorings  and  to 
face  the  other  way.  So  that  when,  at  last,  the 
Marconigrams  begin  to  come  through,  they 
are  no  longer  S.O.S's  of  desperation,  but 
urgings  to  action. 

"Good  Heavens!"  she  says,  suddenly,  "I 
never  dreamed  that  it  was  that  late!" 

She  draws  a  long,  invigorated  breath.  She 
straightens  her  shoulders  and  looks  about  her. 
She  wonders  which  is  her  nearest  way  out  of 
the  park;  sees  the  signboard;  gets  alertly  up; 
goes  over  to  it;  reads  it. 


x 

And  what,  you  ask,  does  it  say? 
What,  I  repeat,  does  it  matter? 
98 


WHAT'S  THE  USE? 

Perhaps  it  says,  "to  q6th  street  and  the 


GATE." 


Perhaps  it   says,      no  dogs  allowed  at 

LARGE." 

What  matters,  here,  is  again  her  reason  for 
reading  it.  For  here,  in  its  simplest  form, 
isolated,  unadulterated,  "chemically  pure," 
we  have  the  second  of  our  impulses  toward 
reading.  This  time  the  woman  read  the  sign 
to  find  herself. 

XI 

And  this  woman  in  the  park  is  typical  of  us 
all.  Just  so  —  not  according  to  its  nature,  but 
according  to  our  need;  impelled,  first  by  one 
and  then  by  the  other  of  these  two  prompt- 
ings —  it  is  possible  for  us  to  read  anything; 
from  the  "help  wanted,- female"  column  — 
which  we  may  read  (i)  because  we  have  read 
everything  else  in  the  paper  and  still  wish  to 
"keep  from  thinking,"  or  (2)  because  we  want 
a  job  —  to  Fox's  "Book  of  Martyrs,"  which 
we  may  read  (1)  to  kill  time  or  (2)  to  prepare 
for  eternity. 

Nor  does  it  cover  the  ground  to  say  that  in 
either  one  of  these  two  modes  we  may  read 

99 


HOW  TO  READ 

anything.  It  is  necessary  to  add  that  in  al- 
ternation between  these  two  moods  we  must 
read  everything. 

Are  you  inclined  to  doubt  this  last? 

Let  us  glance,  for  a  moment,  beyond  the 
scope  of  our  immediate  inquiry. 

Not  alone  our  reading,  but  our  lives,  alter- 
nate between  these  two  moods;  are  conducted 
in  these  two  modes;  are  governed  by  these 
two  appetites,  urges,  —  call  them  what  you 
will,  —  this  desire  to  do,  and  this  desire  to 
shrink  from  doing;  this  recurrent  keenness 
personally  to  master  reality,  and  this  recurrent 
craving  personally  to  escape  from  the  conscious- 
ness of  its  tyranny;  this  longing  to  "find  our- 
selves," and  this  longing  to  "get  away  from 
ourselves." 

If  you  doubt  this,  look  into  your  own  heart. 
You  will  see  (as  your  eyes  get  used  to  the 
dusk)  that  it  is  multiformly  true.  These  two 
urges  are,  so  to  say,  the  legs  of  our  inner  being. 
We  move,  from  day  to  day,  from  hour  to 
hour,  sometimes  from  moment  to  moment,  by 
advancing  first  one  and  then  the  other  of  them. 

For  we  are  built  that  way.  We  are  spiritual 
bipeds. 

ioo 


WHAT'S  THE  USE? 

XII 

But,  as  I  have  already  said,  we  are  seldom 
conscious  of  these  reasons. 

No  one,  unless  he  be  an  unconscionable 
prig,  thinks,  say,  of  the  looking-up  of  a  sub- 
ject in  an  encyclopedia,  as  an  effort  to  "find 
himself";  nor,  unless  he  is  very  low  in  his 
mind,  of  the  reading,  say,  of  a  detective  story 
on  a  journey  as  an  effort  to  "get  away  from 
himself." 

Let  us  therefore  briefly  bridge  the  gap  be- 
tween what  analysis  has  shown  us  to  be  the 
fundamental  character  of  our  reading  im- 
pulses and  the  more  familiar  forms  in  which 
these  impulses  habitually  manifest  themselves 
to  us  in  daily  life. 

What  are  the  simplest  terms  of  everyday 
speech  in  which  we  can  adequately  summarize 
our  conscious  impulses  toward  reading? 

Let  us  put  it  that  all  these  conscious  im- 
pulses fall  under  one  or  other  of  the  follow- 
ing heads : — 

Some  form  of  wanting  to  know. 
Some  form  of  wanting  to  play. 
Some  form  of  wanting  to  forget. 

IOI 


HOW  TO  READ 

Here,  however,  instead  of  two  divisions,  we 
have  three.  And  while  the  first  and  last  of 
these  are  obvious  translations  of  the  two  ex- 
pressions we  have  been  using,  the  relation 
that  the  second  bears  to  these  expressions  is 
not  so  clear.  "  Some  form  of  wanting  to  play" 
describes  a  class  of  reading-impulses  familiar 
to  us  all.  But  how  does  it  fit  into  our  recent 
analysis,  if,  indeed,  it  does  fit  into  it? 

Let  us  examine  the  play-impulse  a  bit  more 
closely. 

XIII 

Our  old  friend  the  New  Standard  Diction- 
ary defines  "play"  as  "action  without  special 
aim,  or  for  amusement;  opposed  to  -work  or 
earnest."  And  from  time  immemorial  poets, 
puritans,  and  push-aheads  —  looking  on, 
from  their  respective  temperamental  angles, 
at  the  apparent  frivolities  of  kids,  kittens, 
cubs,  and  young  children  —  have  been  at  one 
in  accepting  this  definition  at  its  surface  value. 

But  a  new  spirit  of  wanting  to  know  —  the 
spirit  of  redding  things  up  by  a  more  intelli- 
gent reading  of  the  book  of  Nature,  the  scien- 
tific spirit  —  has  recently  come  into  the  world. 

1 02 


WHAT'S  THE  USE? 

And  all  kinds  of  men,  singly  and  in  groups, 
have  been  looking  with  freshly  focused  minds 
at  all  sorts  of  supposedly  unimportant  hap- 
penings; even  at  the  gambols  of  kittens  and 
at  the  games  of  children.  And  (since  science, 
like  charity,  begins  at  home)  one  of  the  first 
things  that  these  latter  observers  discovered 
was  the  fact  that  no  kitten  ever  plays  at  any- 
thing except  at  being  a  cat,  and  that  no  puppy 
ever  plays  at  anything  except  at  being  a  dog. 
At  first  this  seemed  interesting,  but  not 
especially  important.  But,  as  the  observa- 
tions were  extended,  it  developed  that  the 
lower  one  goes  in  the  scale  of  life,  the  more 
meager  and  short-lived  become  the  play-im- 
pulses of  the  young;  while  the  higher  one  goes 
in  the  scale,  the  more  complex  and  long-con- 
tinued they  are.  And  when  the  facts  had  been 
sufficiently  studied  and  compared,  it  became 
clear  that  the  play  of  young  animals,  far 
from  being  a  mere  meaningless  spending  of 
surplus  energy,  is  really  in  the  nature  of  a 
preparation  —  a  dramatization  of  their  develop- 
ing instincts.  And  when,  gradually,  a  great 
many  men  and  groups  of  men,  working  along 
separate  lines  and  ultimately  comparing  notes 

103 


HOW  TO  READ 

and  sharing  discoveries,  had  built  up  the  sci- 
ences of  biology  and  comparative  psychology, 
it  became  evident  at  last  that  the  same  is  true 
of  children. 

Of  course,  at  first,  it  did  n't  look  (to  take  a 
crude  example)  as  though  the  small  son  of 
highly  civilized  parents  was  "playing  at  being 
a  man"  when  he  used  the  first  stick  he  got 
hold  of  to  beat  the  cat  with.  But  no  sooner 
had  biology  discovered  that  the  life  of  every 
creature,  from  conception  to  maturity,  is  a 
condensed  recapitulation  of  the  evolution  of 
its  race,  than  the  matter  became  clear.  The 
three-year-old  club-wielder  is  not  yet  playing 
at  being  a  civilized  man  like  his  father,  but  is 
still  playing  at  being  a  club-wielding  wild  man 
like  his  prehistoric  forbears.  He  is,  in  fact, 
dramatizing  the  instincts  of  that  phase  of  de- 
velopment through  which  he  is  then  passing. 

Later  on  he  and  his  fellows  will  dramatize 
the  instincts  of  savage  tribesmen  by  forming 
"gangs"  and  by  the  building  (qui:e  without 
'special  aim,"  as  the  dictionary  would  say) 
of  bonfires  —  at  the  same  period  developing 
the  savage's  thoughtless  cruelty  and  the  fire- 
defended  nomad's  fear  of  the  dark. 
104 


WHAT'S  THE  USE? 

Nor,  while  all  this  is  going  on,  is  the  child 
neglecting  to  dramatize  that  other  instinct  — 
the  instinct  of  imitativeness.  He  does  this 
by  playing  at  driving  tandem,  playing  at 
keeping  store,  playing  at  keeping  house.  And 
he  constantly  mixes  the  two.  As  when  he 
dramatizes  the  ancestral  instinct  of  pugnacity 
in  elaborate  snowball  fights,  and  organizes 
the  defenses  and  the  attacks  on  the  supposed 
ground-plan  of  Verdun. 

XIV 

In  short,  play,  in  the  young,  is  a  form  of 
practice;  an  embodying  in  action  of  develop- 
ing instincts. 

And  the  same  thing,  with  a  slight  differ- 
ence, is  true  of  grown-ups. 

Even  grown-up  animals  play. 

The  wise  old  dog,  chasing  the  chicken  that 
he  takes  very  good  care  not  to  catch,  is  play- 
ing; and  is  dramatizing  an  instinct  that  life, 
as  he  is  living  it,  forbids  him  to  indulge  in 
earnest. 

And  the  grown-up  man,  with  a  thousand 
instincts  suppressed  by  life  as  he  is  living  it, 
and  by  the  need  of  concentration  on  the  indi- 

105 


HOW  TO  READ 

vidual  tasks  that  this  life  imposes,  takes  his 
recreation  by  playing;  and  plays  by  drama- 
tizing one  or  more  of  these  otherwise  inopera- 
tive urges. 

He  may  do  this  quite  simply  and  directly 
■ —  dramatize  his  instinct  for  the  chase  by 
going  after  big  game,  or  by  shooting  squirrels, 
or  by  firing  at  clay  pipes  at  the  county  fair. 
Or  he  may  do  it  vicariously  —  dramatize  his 
fighting  instinct  by  watching  a  boxing-match. 
Or  he  may  do  it  obliquely — dramatize  his 
acquisitive  instinct  by  collecting  postage 
stamps.  Or  he  may  do  it  symbolically  — 
dramatize  his  your-money-or-your-life  in- 
stinct by  pointing  four  aces  at  an  opponent's 
head  and  relieving  him  of  his  "pile"  at  penny- 
ante. 

xv 

But  there  is  another  form  of  play;  another 
method  of  dramatizing  suppressed  instincts 
—  the  most  universally  applicable,  indeed, 
and  most  minutely  adjustable  of  all  methods 
to  all  needs. 

A  man  may  dramatize  any  instinct  that 
he  has  by  taking  the  right  book  down  from 

1 06 


WHAT'S  THE  USE? 

the  right  shelf  and  by  then  identifying  him- 
self in  imagination  with  the  instinct's  pictured 
fulfillment. 

And  this  is  precisely  what  we  are  seeking  to 
do  when  we  read  from  any  impulse  recogniz- 
able as  "some  form  of  wanting  to  play." 

We  are  seeking  relaxation  by  dramatizing 
some  side  of  ourselves  that  is  not  usually  free 
to  function.  We  are,  indeed,  trying  for  re- 
freshment by  "finding  ourselves"  afresh. 

XVI 

Let  us  get  back  to  our  muttons. 

These  being  our  reasons  for  reading,  what 
is  the  use  of  taking  more  than  ordinary  trouble 
in  learning  to  read? 

The  answer  goes  into  a  nutshell. 

We  live,  as  it  happens,  in  a  world  where  all 
mental  highways  are  partly  paved  with  ink. 
We  live  in  a  world  where  the  avenues  of  ap- 
proach to  "ourselves"  and  many  of  the  most 
direct  avenues  of  escape  from  "ourselves"  — 
the  alternating  roads  of  our  constant  needs  — ■ 
are,  at  least  in  part  and  by  inescapable  neces- 
sity, roads  of  reading. 

How  effectively  —  and  how  far  —  we  are 

107 


HOW  TO  READ 

able  to  go  along  these  roads  depends  upon  our 
means  of  locomotion. 

"Learning  to  read,"  in  the  common-school 
fashion,  is  but  "learning  to  walk"  in  the 
nursery  sense.   The  rest  is  up  to  us. 

We  live,  as  it  were,  alone,  in  the  country. 

We  can,  if  we  choose,  keep  no  horse  in  the 
stable  except  "shank's  mare."  We  can  con- 
fine ourselves  to  the  meager  utilitarianism  of 
"hoofing  it,"  and  to  the  modest  relaxation  of 
"walks." 

Or  we  can  ride  a  bike. 

Or  own  a  Ford. 

Or  drive  an  eight-cylinder  car. 

XVII 

This  is  the  answer. 

Of  course,  as  you  may  perhaps  be  moved  to 
point  out  to  me,  it  is  not  an  ultimate  answer. 

But  there  are  no  ultimate  answers. 

And  for  this  particular  answer  this  much  at 
least  may  be  said:  The  question  —  "What's 
the  use?"  —  is  a  query  that,  like  a  recurrent 
decimal,  may  go  on  repeating  itself  forever. 
And  this  answer  is  a  recurrent  answer. 

Pose   this   question   from   any   angle   you 

108 


WHAT'S  THE  USE? 

choose,  couch  your  reply  in  any  terms  you 
elect,  —  theological  or  biological,  metaphysi- 
cal or  physical,  mystical  or  plain  practical,  — 
and  this  answer  can  be  shown  to  be  the  gist 
of  your  reply. 

It  is,  indeed,  the  ultimate  essence  of  the 
only  answer  there  is. 

XVIII 

And  now,  in  closing  this  chapter,  and  while 
we  have  our  reasons  for  reading  thus  recog- 
nizably before  us,  I  want  to  say  a  further  word 
about  them  in  connection  with  the  special 
purposes  of  our  inquiry  —  the  acquirement, 
namely,  of  a  more  intelligent  use  of  reading 
for  our  own  ends. 

We  have  seen  that  our  reasons  for  reading 
may  be  summed  up  as  follows:  — 

Some  urge  toward  wanting  to  know,  and  some 
urge  toward  wanting  to  play;  both  being  forms  of 
the  desire  to  "find  ourselves";  and  some  urge  to- 
ward wanting  to  forget,  the  same  being  an  impulse 
to  escape  from  the  consciousness  of  a  side  of  our- 
selves that  is  weary,  or  baffled,  or  discouraged. 

Please  note,  then,  that  the  last  of  these 
reasons  can  justify  itself  by  fulfillment  only 

109 


HOW  TO  READ 

through  the  development,  in  us,  of  one  or 
other  of  the  other  two  urges. 

We  cannot  forget,  through  reading,  except 
by  becoming  interested  in  what  we  read.  And 
we  cannot  become  interested  in  what  we  read 
except  by  beginning  to  "want  to  know"  or  by 
beginning  to  "play." 

We  cannot,  in  short,  escape  from  one  side 
of  ourselves  except  by  beginning  to  formulate 
another. 

We  are  like  a  man,  standing.  If  he  wearies 
of  standing  on  one  foot,  he  can  stand  on  the 
other.  And  if  he  wearies  of  standing  on  that, 
he  can  shift  back.  Only,  mentally,  we  are 
centipedes.    We  have  a  hundred  shifts. 

We  are  many-sided.  And  there  are  three 
ways  of  ministering  to,  and  of  being  served  by, 
—  each  of  them  through  reading.  "Wanting 
to  know"  is  an  active  side  of  us,  reaching  out 
for  its  own.  "  Wanting  to  play  "  is  a  smothered 
side  of  us,  asking  to  be  allowed  to  breathe. 
"Wanting  to  forget"  is  a  wearied  side  of  us, 
asking  to  be  relieved  from  duty.  An  intelli- 
gent use  of  reading  for  our  own  ends,  there- 
fore, involves  an  intelligent  selection  of  what 
we  will  elect  to  know,  of  how  we  will  elect  to 

no 


WHAT'S  THE  USE? 

play,  and  of  what  forms  of  these  activities  we 
will  elect  to  employ  for  purposes  of  relief  and 
relaxation. 

Later  on,  in  the  chapter  on  "A  Sense  of 
Direction,"  we  shall  return  to  this  matter  of 
intelligent  choice.  But  before  doing  this  it  is 
necessary  for  us  to  gain,  at  first-hand,  a  more 
vivid  realization  and  a  more  intimate  under- 
standing of  the  many-sidedness  that  we  have 
above  referred  to.  We  must  find  out  exactly 
what  we  mean  by  calling  reading  an  explora- 
tion of  two  worlds  —  the  world  outside  us 
and  the  world  within. 


CHAPTER  V 

A    SENSE    OF    DIRECTION 

I 

We  have  all  heard  of  the  Frenchman  who,  at 
about  forty,  discovered,  quite  by  accident 
and  to  his  great  surprise,  that  in  keeping  his 
diary  and  answering  his  correspondence  and 
making  his  business  reports  and  other  taken- 
for-granted  uses  of  pen  and  paper,  he  had  all 
his  life  been  writing  prose  without  knowing  it. 

We  have  now  reached  a  point  in  our  in- 
quiry where  a  somewhat  similar  realization 
should  be  ours.  All  our  lives  we  have  been 
doing  the  intricate  things  set  forth  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapters,  and  have  been  doing  them 
for  the  specific  reasons  therein  explained,  and 
yet  have  never  suspected  either  fact. 

It  is  not  true,  therefore,  as  it  may  possibly 
appear  to  some  of  you,  that  I  am  recommend- 
ing you  to  learn  an  unfamiliar  game,  or  to 
acquire  a  new  and  heretofore  unpracticed 
technique.  Far  from  it.  The  game  that  I  am 
recommending  to  you  we  all  began  to  play, 

112 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

untaught,  in  the  nursery.  And  the  technique 
that  I  am  urging  you  to  perfect  is  the  same 
technique  that,  from  inborn  necessity,  we 
have  all  developed  and  which,  in  a  catch- 
as-catch-can  way,  we  all  employ  in  our 
most  casual  scanning  of  the  most  ephemeral 
print. 

All  that  I  am  suggesting  that  you  should 
do  is  to  play  this  game  with  a  more  con- 
scious knowledge  of  its  nature  and  possibili- 
ties; and  develop  this  technique  with  a  more 
purposeful  and  personal  realization  of  its  re- 
quirements. 

ii 

Nor  does  this  mean  that  I  am  urging  you  to 
become  self-conscious  in  your  reading. 

I  happened,  just  now,  to  speak  of  reading  as 
a  g?me.  Let  us  consider  for  a  moment  the  re- 
lationship that  self-consciousness  bears  to  our 
performance  in  those  more  outward  and  ob- 
jective games  —  games  where  physical  skill 
as  well  as  mental  supervision  is  involved  — 
such  as  tennis,  golf,  billiards. 

Many  people  play  tennis,  or  billiards,  or 
golf,  very  much  as  most  of  us  read  —  by  the 

113 


HOW  TO  READ 

spontaneous,  unanalyzed,  and  all  but  undi- 
rected exercise  of  their  natural  aptitudes. 
They  learn  the  rules.  They  flounder  round 
for  a  time  while  their  hands  and  eyes  are  get- 
ting the  hang  of  the  tools  and  their  tricks. 
And  then  they  go  ahead,  hit-or-missedly  in- 
creasing their  speed  and  accuracy  and  general- 
ship by  the  catch-as-catch-can,  experimental 
route  of  personal  practice.  And  in  this  sort  of 
play,  once  the  initial  awkwardnesses  are  over- 
come and  so  long  as  one  is  pitted  against  play- 
ers of  one's  own  caliber,  self-consciousness 
seldom  figures.  But  once  let  such  a  player  de- 
termine to  "learn  the  game";  once  let  him 
place  himself  under  the  guidance  of  a  teacher; 
and  instantly  self-consciousness  becomes  a 
prime  factor  to  be  taken  into  account — at 
once  the  subtlest  means,  and  the  deadliest 
foe,  to  progress. 

At  first  it  is  crassly  and  exaggeratedly  pres- 
ent in  all  the  student's  efforts.  There  are  so 
many  things  that  he  has  to  do  (things  that  he 
has  been  doing  pretty  well  without  knowing 
it,  but  now  has  to  do  better;  things  that  he 
has  been  doing  wrong,  and  now  has  to  make 
himself  do  properly;  things  that  he  has  not 

114 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

been  doing  at  all,  and  now  has  to  take  intc 
account)  that  for  a  time  he  feels  as  though 
he  were  driving  sixteen  horses  abreast,  while 
balancing  himself  on  the  bare  back  of  one  of 
them. 

But  let  us  skip  this  phase  of  his  training.  It 
is  to  a  later  adjustment  that  I  wish  to  call 
your  attention.  And,  moreover,  we  have  al- 
ready dealt  with  these  initial  problems  of 
coordination  in  comparing  the  developing  of 
an  auto-driver's  "unconscious  alertness"  to 
that  required  of  the  skillful  reader. 

There  comes  a  time,  then,  when  this  learner 
of  a  game  of  skill  is  dealing  with  such  deli- 
cately mixed  matters  of  muscular  training 
and  mental  control  as  those  involved  in  a 
billiard-player's  "stroke,"  or  a  tennis-play- 
er's "delivery"  of  a  fast  serve,  or  a  golfer's 
"follow-through."  He  now  understands  the 
laws  that  govern  the  material  objects  he  is 
manipulating.  He  knows  definitely  what  it 
is  that  he  is  striving  to  accomplish.  And  he 
has  acquired  at  least  an  occasional  semi-per- 
fection of  unconscious  performance.  But  he 
wants  to  correct  a  fault,  or  to  add  a  cubit  to 
his  efficiency,  or  to  turn  "occasional  semi- 
US 


HOW  TO  READ 

perfection"  into  a  more  constant  and  reliable 
asset  of  his  technical  equipment.  And  either 
under  the  direct  guidance  of  a  coach,  or  in 
self-supervised  practice,  he  is  endeavoring  to 
attain  this  improved  status. 

Almost  every  one  of  us  has  struggled,  in 
some  form  of  psycho-physical  self-training, 
with  this  curiously  baffling  problem.  And  al- 
most every  one  of  us  has  discovered  in  con- 
sequence that  a  deliberate,  self-conscious  de- 
termining of  what  it  is  that  we  wish  to  do, 
and  of  how  it  is  that  we  propose  to  do  it,  is 
necessary  before  the  undertaking  of  the  act;  but 
that  the  act  itself  must,  if  it  is  going  to  "get 
over"  in  any  way  worth  mentioning,  be  per- 
formed with  the  free,  untrammeled,  unlooked- 
at  play  of  physical  spontaneity. 

Let  us  put  it  that  the  only  way  in  which 
these  niceties  of  skill  can  possibly  be  attained 
is  by  Self-Consciousness  playing  teacher  to 
our  muscles;  by  its  going  over  and  over  for 
them  the  things  they  are  to  do  and  to  leave 
undone;  and  by  its  then,  at  the  crucial  instant 
of  execution,  turning  its  back  on  them  with  a 
nice  and  considerate  delicacy  and  saying, "Go 
ahead  now,  I'm  not  looking." 

116 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 


in 

And  the  same  thing,  precisely,  is  true  of 
the  subtler  mind-training  involved  in  improv- 
ing one's  reading  skill.  I  am  therefore  so  far 
from  wishing  to  urge  you  to  self-conscious- 
ness in  reading  that,  on  the  contrary,  I  would 
urge  you  to  a  more  and  ever  more  zestful  and 
complete  yielding  of  yourself,  in  the  actual  act 
of  reading,  to  the  full,  free,  untrammeled  play 
of  your  natural  faculties.  But  I  would  have 
you  train  these  faculties  to  a  suppler  and  more 
efficient  performance  of  their  unconscious 
tasks,  through  a  knowledge  of  the  real  nature 
of  reading,  and  through  an  alert  readiness 
personally  to  supervise  the  process  on  occa- 
sion. I  would  have  you  gradually  develop  a 
growingly  intelligent  system  of  individual  ex- 
perimentation in  the  choice  of  what  you  read, 
based  upon  your  growing  understanding  of 
our  common  and  self-serving  reasons  for 
reading.  And  I  would  have  you  gradually 
learn  to  serve  your  personal  ends  more  and 
more  fully  by  concentrating  your  atten- 
tion and  your  interest  and  your  subsequent 
criticism    on    what    actually    happens    inside 

117 


HOW  TO  READ 

of  you  when  you  read  the  things  you  have 
chosen. 

IV 

We  have  already  considered  in  some  detail 
the  question  of  personally  supervising  our 
reading  processes  as  occasion  demands  and 
shall  deal  with  other  aspects  of  the  matter 
later. 

In  the  present  chapter  we  are  going  to  seek 
out,  from  our  actual  experience  in  reading,  a 
sound  basis  for  a  system  of  individual  experi- 
ment in  the  choice  of  what  we  read. 

And  afterward  we  shall  examine  more  care- 
fully the  true  character  and  real  importance 
of  what  actually  happens  in  us  in  reading. 

But  even  for  our  present  purpose  it  is  im- 
portant that  we  have  at  least  a  general  idea 
of  the  fact  that  "the  things  that  actually 
happen  in  us  when  we  read"  form  the  sole 
value-basis  that  reading  has  for  us,  as  well  as 
the  one  basic  test  of  all  our  judgments  of  its 
worth  for  us. 

And  the  proof  of  this  is  simple. 

Nothing  whatever  does  happen  when  we 
read  except  what  happens  inside  ourselves. 

nS 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

And  since  we  read  wholly  in  terms  of  our  past 
experience,  these  happenings  all  consist  either 
of  revivifyings  of  simple  items  of  that  experi- 
ence (revisualized  seeings,  reawakened  emo- 
tions, and  the  like),  or  of  new,  never-before- 
achieved  combinings  of  old  experience  into 
new  awarenesses,  new  understandings,  new 
sympathies  and  prejudices,  new  thoughts  — 
in  fine,  into  new  experiences. 

But  to  know  pleasure  and  pain,  to  feel  de- 
light and  disgust,  to  be  moved  to  sympathy, 
resentment,  pity,  and  hate,  to  observe  human 
conduct  and  approve  or  deplore  it,  to  judge  it 
by  our  own  and  to  estimate  our  own  by  it,  to 
be  stirred  to  active,  self-defining  acquiescence 
in  the  views  of  our  fellows,  or  to  be  roused 
to  an  active,  self-revealing  formulation  of 
our  disagreement  with  them,  —  are  not  such 
things  as  these  of  the  very  essence  of  being 
alive?  Are  they  not,  indeed,  the  coefficients 
of  living?  And  are  not  such  things  as  these 
the  precise  sort  of  things,  and  the  sole  sort  of 
things  that  happen  in  us  when  we  read? 

But  suppose  none  of  them  happen? 

Our  proposition  is  proved  by  the  absurdity 
of  its  converse.   What  possible  value  can  any 

119 


HOW  TO   READ 

reading  matter  have  for  us,  or  what  hand- 
hold for  an  estimate  of  it  can  we  possess,  if 
nothing  whatever  of  all  this  happens  in  us 
when  we  read  it? 

v 

Reading,  then,  is  a  form  of  living  because  of 
the  things  that  happen  in  us  when  we  read. 

And  since  our  mothers  sang  lullabies  to  us  in 
our  cradles,  and  repeated  Mother  Goose  to  us 
in  the  nursery,  and  read  us  fairy  tales  before 
the  fire,  and  told  us  stories  at  bedtime,  we 
began  to  practice  this  form  of  living  (we  be- 
gan, let  us  say,  to  read  by  proxy)  long  before 
we  learned  our  letters. 

Here,  by  the  way,  is  another  chance  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  two  kinds  of  "knowing 
how  to  read"  —  the  kind  that  we  are  con- 
sidering in  this  book,  and  the  kind  that  the 
United  States  census  and  the  dictionary  and 
the  primary  school  have  in  mind.  In  the  latter 
sense,  you  and  I  know  how  to  read  with  our 
eyes;  and  a  blind  man  knows  how  to  read  with 
his  fingers;  and  a  blind  man  with  both  arms 
amputated  cannot  know  how  to  read  at  all. 
But  suppose  you  were  private  secretary  to  an 

1 20 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

armless  blind  man.  And  suppose  that  you 
(with  your  eyes  and  your  vocal  chords  doing 
their  humdrum  tasks,  but  with  your  mind  and 
your  imagination  busy  elsewhere)  were  to 
read  "David  Copperfield"  aloud  to  your  in- 
tensely attentive  employer.  Which  one  of 
you,  in  the  sense  of  our  present  inquiry,  would 
you  say  had  read  the  novel? 

VI 

We  began,  then,  to  live  and  (with  the  aid  of 
a  private  secretary)  we  began  to  read,  in  the 
nursery.  And  we  have  been  reading,  as  well  as 
living,  ever  since.  We  read  baby  books  in 
words  of  one  syllable  when  we  were  toddlers. 
We  read  childrens'  stories  in  words  of  two 
syllables  when  we  were  children.  As  we  grew 
older  we  read  school  primers  and  textbooks. 
We  read  "Alice  in  Wonderland"  and  "St. 
Nicholas."  We  read  Sunday-school  scenarios, 
and  the  "Youth's  Companion,"  and  penny- 
dreadfuls,  and  "Treasure  Island,"  and  "Little 
Women,"  and  "The  Golden  Treasury,"  and 
so  on  and  so  forth;  up  and  out  into  maturity. 

Has  there  not,  perhaps,  without  our  realiz- 
ing it  or  thinking  anything  about  it,  been  a 

121 


HOW  TO   READ 

definite  and  decipherable  relationship  between 
our  developing  selves  and  this  progressive 
reading?  A  linked,  organic,  vital  parallelism 
between  them:  Is  it  not  possible  that  these 
two  forms  of  living  have  marched,  hand  in 
hand,  helping  each  other  along,  on  an  un- 
charted road  that  both  followed,  yet  that 
neither  took  note  of? 

And  if  this  should  prove  true,  what  better 
way  could  we  have  of  obtaining  what  we  are 
seeking —  a  sense  of  direction  in  our  reading 
—  than  that  of  diagraming  this  past  relation- 
ship, mapping  that  part  of  this  road  that  lies 
behind  us,  and  then  sighting  ahead  along  these 
established  li?ies  ? 

Let  us  see  if  we  cannot,  somehow,  find  a 
point  of  vantage  —  a  mental  steeple,  or 
mountain-top,  or  captive  balloon  —  from 
which  we  can  get  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the  way 
we  have  come. 

VII 

J.  Henri  Fabre,  that  lovable  old  French 
savant  with  the  soul  of  a  poet,  the  attain- 
ments of  a  scientist,  and  the  attitude  of  a 
philosopher,  tells  us,  in  one  of  his  wonderful 

122 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

chapters  on  the  life  of  the  spider,  how  the 
young  of  the  Banded  Epira  get  their  start  in 
the  world. 

The  Banded  Epira  do  not  weave  webs  to 
snare  their  prey.  They  stalk  their  quarry, 
tiger-like,  on  foot;  or  lie  in  wait  behind  the 
petals  of  a  rose  and  leap,  like  micro-jaguars, 
on  the  backs  of  bees  that  come  to  drink.  But 
each  one  of  them,  none  the  less,  has  a  silk 
mill  in  its  abdomen.  And  it  is  upon  the  spin- 
nerets of  this  factory  that  the  mother  spider 
draws  when  she  weaves  the  fleece-lined  pouch 
in  which  she  lays  her  eggs  —  the  cocoon-like 
pellicule  that  she  fastens  beneath  a  twig  at  the 
foot  of  some  spindling  bush,  and  from  which, 
later  on,  the  heat  of  mid-July  calls  forth  some 
six  hundred  pin-points  of  new-hatched  life. 
And  it  is  with  the  initial  contents  of  these 
same  spinnerets  as  their  sole  capital  that 
these  newborn  mites  start  in  on  the  business 
of  living. 

No  sooner  have  the  six  hundred  emerged 
than  they  set  out,  en  masse,  to  climb  the  bush. 
And  as  this,  for  such  teeny  climbers,  proves  a 
several  days'  journey,  the  tribe,  at  each  day's 
end,  spins  itself  a  shelter  which  it  occupies  for 

123 


HOW  TO  READ 

the  night  and  abandons  in  the  morning.  And 
thus,  alternately  climbing  and  camping,  at  last 
they  reach  the  top.  And  there,  with  feverish 
industry,  they  build  a  platform  of  interwoven 
strands.  And  upon  this  for  a  time  they  come 
and  go,  busily  engaged  in  some  work  of  prep- 
aration. And  then  —  mystery  or  miracle 

for  all  the  world  like  tiny  witches  traveling 
on  broomsticks  —  they  are  seen,  one  by  one, 
serenely  to  depart,  floating  on  nothing  through 
the  summer  air. 

And  Fabre  tells  us  how,  by  means  of  some 
ingenious  experiments  conducted  in  his  study, 
he  at  last  discovered  the  simple  secret  of  this 
aerial  dispersion  —  filaments  of  silk,  so  fine  as 
to  be  invisible  to  the  human  eye,  paid  out  to 
the  breeze  by  each  tiny  spider  until  buoyant 
enough  to  support  him;  and  then  embarked 
upon,  air-ship  fashion,  for  the  great  adventure. 

And  I  have  retold  the  story  here  because  it 
is  upon  just  such  an  embarkation  that  I  am 
now  asking  you  to  join  me.  Like  these  spider- 
lets  we  have  journeyed  together,  camping  by 
the  way,  from  the  bottom  of  our  bush.  Like 
them  we  have  built  a  sort  of  platform  at  the 
top.   And  now,  like  them,  we  are  about  to  set 

124 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

forth,  supported,  to  the  eye  of  the  uninitiated, 
upon  nothing,  but  really  borne  securely  aloft 
upon  two  fine  filaments  of  understanding  that 
we  have  spun. 

Let  us  examine  this  air-craft. 

The  first  filament  is  the  knowledge  that  we 
are  makers  when  we  read.  That  things  read 
are  not  taken  into  the  mind  bodily  from  with- 
out, —  sucked  in  through  the  eye  like  soda 
through  a  straw,  —  but  are  built  up,  brand- 
new,  within  us.  That  we  do  this  building  with 
assorted  fragments  of  our  own  experience  just 
as  literally  as  a  child  builds  castles  with  its 
wooden  blocks.  And  that,  just  as  the  child's 
block-architecture  is  conditioned  by  the 
quantity  and  variety  of  its  supply,  so  the 
scope  of  our  reading  capacity  depends  upon 
the  amount  and  variousness  of  living  —  of 
physical,  emotional,  intellectual,  spiritual 
living  —  that  we  have  done. 

The  second  filament  is  the  knowledge  that 
no  matter  what  we  read  or  when,  no  matter 
whether  we  are  conscious  of  it  or  not,  we  al- 
ways read  either  to  "find  ourselves"  or  to 
"get  away  from  ourselves."  Either  from  the 
calculated  desire,  or  from  the  playful  joy,  of 

125 


HOW  TO  READ 

establishing  some  new  order  in  our  individual 
chaos;  or  for  the  comfort  of  forgetting  the  dis- 
order that  has  baffled  us  by  turning  to  some 
fresh  order-making. 

These  are  the  wings  of  our  bi-plane. 

VIII 

As  we  look  down  and  back,  between  these 
buoyant  bits  of  understanding  about  the  way 
we  read  and  our  reasons  for  reading,  we  shall 
see  the  past,  like  a  landscape,  begin  to  open 
out  beneath  us.  We  shall  see  supposedly  hap- 
hazard choices  in  our  early  reading  fall  into 
significant  relationship  to  one  another.  We 
shall  see  method  emerge  from  the  mix-up.  We 
shall  see,  finally,  that  the  way  we  have  come 
stretches,  like  a  straight  ribbon  of  road,  visible 
and  comprehensible  before  our  eyes. 

IX 

We  see,  for  example,  why,  as  little  children, 
we  liked  to  read  Mother  Goose. 

For  the  youngest  child,  no  less  than  the 
wisest  savant,  reads  with  its  own  experience 
for  building-blocks.     But  the  child's  experi- 

126 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

ence  is  very  fragmentary.   And,  what  is  more, 
the  fragments  are  as  yet  unassorted. 

Its  mind  is  like  a  cupboard  without  parti- 
tions, into  which  all  that  it  finds  with  its  five 
senses  —  the  pap-spoon  and  the  puppy-dog, 
the  taste  of  milk  and  the  feel  of  stomach-ache, 
the  sound  of  the  cat's  miaow  and  the  appear- 
ance of  the  moon's  disk — are  all  stowed  away, 
helter-skelter,  like  loot  gathered  for  a  rum- 
mage sale. 

But  though  its  experience  is  a  jumble,  yet 
already  in  this  jumble  the  child  "knows 
what  it  likes."  And,  moreover,  since  it  lives 
in  a  world  where  there  is  already  "rhyme," 
though  not  yet  "reason,"  it  already,  without 
knowing  it,  senses  something  about  "art." 

It  is  not  yet  equipped  to  read  "Hamlet." 
It  is  not  even,  as  yet,  equipped  to  read  "Puss 
in  Boots."  But  it  is  equipped  to  "produce" 
on  the  stage  of  its  own  consciousness  —  and 
it  does  take  genuine  joy  in  there  "producing" 
—  that  famous  scenario  — 

"Hey  diddle  diddle! 
The  cat  and  the  fiddle; 
The  cow  jumped  over  the  moon. 
The  little  dog  laughed  to  see  such  sport 
And  the  dish  ran  away  with  the  spoon." 

127 


HOW  TO  READ 

And  while  it  is  "producing"  it,  it  laughs 
and  claps  its  hands.  For  it  is  establishing  a 
rhythmic  order  in  the  jumble  of  its  experience. 
It  is  "making  new  combinations  out  of  its 
stock  in  trade,"  and  is  thus,  according  to 
its  infant  mood,  either  "finding  itself"  amid 
its  chaotic  environment,  or — forgetting  the 
colic. 

x 

We  see,  again,  why  it  is  that  the  same 
child,  a  bit  later,  reads  fairy  tales  with  such 
gusto. 

It  has,  by  now,  greatly  multiplied  its  ex- 
periences. It  has,  moreover,  begun  to  discover 
in  others  like  traits  to  its  own.  It  has  begun 
to  feel  pity  for  others'  pain  through  imagining 
itself  hurt.  It  has  begun  to  take  pleasure  in 
others'  joy  through  imagining  itself  rejoiced. 
It  has  established  a  tentative  (although  a 
largely  arbitrary  and  unwarranted)  order  in 
the  jumble  of  its  experience.  It  has  grasped 
the  crude  principle  (although  it  has  not  yet 
learned  the  hard-and-fast  rules)  of  cause  and 
effect.  It  has  begun  to  distil  ideas,  and  has 
developed   its   instinctive   responsiveness    to 

128 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

"rhyme"  into  a  budding  passion  for  "poetic 
justice."  And  it  is,  without  knowing  it,  eager 
for  any  opportunity  or  guidance  that  will  en- 
able it  to  invest  this  capital;  to  arrange  and 
rearrange  it  in  explanatory  sequences  and 
satisfying  symmetry.  It  is  like  a  housewife 
with  a  kettle  of  simmering  jelly,  looking  round 
for  moulds  to  pour  it  into. 

And  as  such  scenarios  as  "Cinderella"  and 
"The  Sleeping  Princess"  are  exactly  the 
moulds  it  needs,  it  seizes  upon  them  with 
avidity  and  pours  its  accumulated  capital  into 
them  with  a  realism  of  mental  stage  manag- 
ership equal  to  Belasco's.  It  lives  them  — 
quite  literally —  with  round-eyed  wonder  and 
palpitant  delight;  and  in  the  act  it  is  con- 
structively "finding  itself"  through  self-as- 
sertion even  when  we  think  that  it  is  only  for- 
getting hurt  feelings  or  a  burned  finger  in  the 
fascination  of  the  inner  "movies." 

XI 

Let  us  glance  in  passing  at  boyhood. 

Some  of  you,  I  know,  have  before  now  asked 
yourselves  why  your  growing  boy,  leaving  the 
orthodox  reading  you  had  so  carefully  pro- 

129 


HOW  TO  READ 

vided  for  him  in  the  library,  has  stolen  out  to 
the  lean-to  behind  the  woodshed  and  buried 
himself  in  "Tomahawk  Bill,  the  Terror  of  the 
Tetons."  Doubtless  you  felt  that  evil  com- 
munications had  corrupted  his  native  man- 
ners. But  you  were  wrong.  If  you  will  look 
down  from  our  air-craft  you  will  see  that  he 
did  it,  not  from  acquired  perversity,  but  from 
an  inner  urge. 

He  did  it  for  the  same  reason  that  the 
guinea  hen  "steals  her  nest"  in  the  woodlot 
behind  the  barn. 

The  guinea  hen  is  half  domesticated  and 
half  wild.  When  she  "steals  her  nest"  she  is 
dramatizing  her  wild  instincts.  The  boy  is 
half  civilized  and  half  a  savage.  He  reads 
dime  novels  to  dramatize  the  imagining  that 
the  savage  in  him  has  done,  or  —  to  forget 
the  "civilizing"  that  is  being  done  to  him. 

XII 

And  now  let  us  ask  ourselves  a  subtler 
question.  Let  us  ask  why  it  is  that  adoles- 
cence —  youth  ripening  toward  maturity  — 
reads  with  such  glowing  sympathy  the  visions 
of  the  poets,  and  produces  with  such  zest  the 

130 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

lighter  scenarios  of  idealism  and  romance; 
while  only  a  little  later,  the  same  individuals 
■ —  new-fledged  grown-ups  now  —  are  so  often 
found  demanding  plots  of  stripped  action  and 
tales  in  which,  to  use  their  own  expression, 
there  is  "something  doing." 

This,  too,  viewed  from  our  altitude,  is 
simple. 

Youth  ripening  toward  maturity  sees  itself 
as  the  heir  to  the  ages.  It  conceives  the  sum 
of  its  experience  as  a  completed  course  of  prep- 
aration. It  is  like  a  hound  straining  at  the 
leash,  or  a  runner  tensed  for  the  start.  Its 
motto  is  "Just  you  wait!" 

It  scorns  to  use  its  building-blocks  of  ex- 
perience, —  the  piled-up  raw  material  of  its 
preparedness,  —  except  to  build  tall  towers  of 
what  it  means  to  do.  It  reads  romance  alter- 
nately to  dramatize  its  own  intentions,  and  to 
forget  the  tedium  of  enforced  delay. 

But  it  is  quite  otherwise  with  new-fledged 
grown-ups. 

From  strutting  seniors  in  the  University  of 
Youth  these  have  become  yelled-at  office  boys 
in  the  department  store  of  Life.  From  being 
the  "leading  citizens"  in  a  land  of  dreams, 

131 


HOW  TO  READ 

they  have  become  tenderfeet  on  the  frontier 
of  Reality. 

It  is,  indeed,  almost  permissible  to  say  that 
they  have  been  born  again. 

For  if  the  boy  (a  creature  physically  active 
in  a  world  of  the  imagination)  is  indeed  "father 
to  the  man"  (the  average  young  man  being  a 
creature  mentally  alert  in  a  world  of  physical 
endeavor)  —  then  your  newborn  adult  is  a 
baby.   And  for  a  time  he  reads  like  a  child. 

"Stories  of  action"  are  the  Mother  Goose 
rhymes  of  young  maturity.  The  cows  in  them 
make  magnificent  leaps.  The  pussy-cats  in 
them  face  the  music.  All  the  young  dogs  are 
elated.  And  in  the  end  the  dish  always  elopes 
with  the  spoon.  In  short,  they  are  scenarios 
in  which  the  unassorted  fragments  of  a  new, 
chaotic,  "practical"  experience  are  arranged 
in  a  rhythm  of  accomplishment. 

XIII 

So  much,  then,  for  what  lies  definitely  be- 
hind us.  Let  us  descend  from  our  flight  of  ob- 
servation and  take  stock  of  our  discoveries. 

We  have  seen  that  the  roads  of  living  and 
of  reading  do  indeed  parallel  each  other.  And 

132 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

that  in  this  parallelism  they  maintain  an  ac- 
tive, vital,  organic  relationship.  And  that, 
in  the  past  at  least,  their  joint  direction  has 
been  the  direction  of  our  developing  lives. 

We  have  seen,  moreover  that  in  traveling 
these  linked  roads  it  behooves  us  not  only  to 
live,  but  to  out-live. 

Do  you,  by  any  chance,  doubt  this  last? 

I  know  a  woman  of  forty-two  who  still  plays 

at  paper  dolls,  and  who  still  responds  with 

evidently  pleasurable  shudders  to  the  reading 

of  that  earliest  of  our  remembered  tragedies,  — ■ 

"Hickory,  dickory,  dock! 
The  mouse  ran  up  the  clock." 

But,  "Ah!"  you  are  perhaps  saying,  "this 
is  an  extreme  example." 

So  be  it.  Yet  you  all  know,  I  am  sure,  men 
and  women  of  an  age  approximate  to  hers 
who,  having  been  safely  born  into  maturity, 
went  no  further;  and  who  still  continue  to 
ask,  both  of  life  and  of  letters,  merely  that 
"something  shall  happen  on  every  page." 

Do  you  not  see  what  has  overtaken  them? 

They  have  let  life  cease  to  be  a  develop- 
ment and  become  a  treadmill.  They  have  let 
living  cease  to  be  an  adventure  and  become  a 

133 


HOW  TO  READ 

habit.    And  their  reading  has,  of  necessity, 
followed  suit. 

For  although  our  reading  ranges,  appar- 
ently, much  further  afield  than  our  lives,  the 
moving  centers  of  their  activities  coincide. 
Our  living  and  our  reading  are  like  a  man  and 
his  dog.  The  man  walks  along  his  chosen  or 
his  given  way.  The  dog  puts  rings  around  him 
as  he  moves.  Now  the  dog  is  ahead,  nosing 
the  path.  Now  it  is  far  behind,  re-sniffing  the 
back  trail.  Now  it  is  off  to  the  right,  announc- 
ing a  treed  squirrel.  Now  it  is  digging  franti- 
cally for  a  ground-hog  on  the  left.  But  always 
the  center  of  the  dog's  activities  is  the  man's 
moving  footsteps.  And  if  the  man  lies  down 
by  the  side  of  the  road  and  falls  asleep,  sooner 
or  later  the  dog  will  come  and  stretch  out 
beside  him. 

XIV 

And  now,  having  traced  the  course  of  these 
joint  roads  behind  us,  let  us  see  if  we  cannot, 
on  the  same  lines,  prefigure  their  course  ahead. 
Let  us  see  if  we  cannot  forecast  the  general 
direction  of  maturity's  living-and-reading  de- 
velopment. 

134 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

Physical  activity  is,  after  all,  only  the  basis 
of  living;  only  the  foundation  —  the  root,  if 
you  prefer — of  our  emotional,  our  intellec- 
tual, our  spiritual  development.  And  it  is 
along  this  line  —  it  is  in  this  direction  if  at  all 
—  that  our  development  takes  place  and  that 
our  experiences  pile  up.  And  it  is  in  circles 
round  our  progress  along  this  line  that  that 
sheep-dog  of  our  experiences,  our  reading, 
moves. 

For  a  time,  as  we  have  seen,  scenarios  of 
action  engross  us.  But  variety  of  action  is 
circumscribed.  The  situations  of  physical  ac- 
complishment, juggle  them  as  we  may,  are 
limited  in  number.  The  meaning  of  life,  we 
gradually  discover,  develops  for  us  less  through 
what  happens  to  us  from  without  than  through 
what,  as  a  direct  consequence  of  this,  happens 
to  us  from  within.  Our  physical  activities 
become  ordered.  Our  emotional  experiences 
accumulate.  Sooner  or  later,  therefore,  we 
take  to  using  these  building-blocks  of  ex- 
perienced emotion  in  reading  books  of  an 
emotional  appeal. 

But  the  reading  of  love-stories  may  also 
cease  to  be  an  adventure  and  become  a  habit. 

135 


HOW  TO  READ 

For  the  situations  of  emotion  are  also,  both 
in  life  and  in  literature,  limited  in  number. 
The  real  variousness  of  our  common  human- 
ity lies,  not  in  the  differences  of  our  emotions, 
but  in  the  infinite  variety  and  conjugation  of 
our  personal  reactions  to  emotion.  Little  by- 
little,  therefore,  as  our  experienced  realiza- 
tion of  differences  accumulates,  we  reach  out 
toward  the  reading  of  books  that  marshal 
these  differences  —  books  of  an  intellectual 
appeal.  Perhaps  we  begin  with  genre  studies 
and  move  on  to  tales  of  character  devel- 
opment. Perhaps  we  begin  with  local  color 
effects  and  move  on  through  parochial  litera- 
ture and  books  of  travel  to  memoirs,  autobi- 
ographies, and  treatises  on  historical  periods. 
Perhaps  we  begin  with  handbooks  of  science 
and  move  on,  through  the  rudiments  of  ab- 
normal psychology  and  the  outlines  of  alien 
theologies,  to  the  beginnings  of  speculative 
philosophy.  Or  perhaps  we  pick  and  choose, 
push  out  now  on  this  side  now  on  that  —  read 
anything  and  everything,  in  short,  that,  over- 
lapping in  some  measure  our  familiar  lives  and 
extending  a  bit  beyond  into  the  unknown, 
enables  us  to  orient  ourselves  a  little  in  an  in- 

136 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

finitely  interesting  world,  or  to  forget,  by  con- 
structing these  oases  of  deciphered  orderliness, 
the  immediate  disorder  that  baffles  us  nearer 
home. 

And  here,  at  first  glance,  it  would  seem 
that  we  are  come  to  the  parting  of  the  ways. 

Thus  far,  we  will  have  jogged  along  to- 
gether on  a  common  road.  But  now  that  the 
highway  breaks  up  into  a  maze  of  cart  tracks, 
now  that  one  of  us  may  take  the  trail  of  sci- 
ence, another  that  of  sociology,  another  that 
of  fiction,  or  of  esthetics,  or  of  history,  or  of 
philosophy,  it  may  seem  that  we  shall  never 
meet  again. 

But  this  need  not  be  so. 

To  discover  this  it  is  only  necessary  for  us 
to  go  on,  each  in  his  own  way,  with  the  twin 
adventures  of  living  and  reading. 

For,  choose  what  by-ways  you  will,  pursue 
as  many  of  them  as  you  can,  you  will  find  at 
last  that  they  all  give  over  their  fanlike  dis- 
persing and  begin  to  bend  inward  toward 
reunion  —  a  reunion  hidden  beneath  the  ho- 
rizon, but  ever  more  and  more  definable  in 
location  by  the  simple  geometry  of  this  con- 
vergence. 

*37 


HOW  TO  READ 

For  the  ultimate  meaning  of  life  inheres,  not 
in  the  multiplicity  of  differences  that  super- 
ficially distinguish  us,  but  in  the  deeper  one- 
ness of  the  common  humanity  that  we  share 
and  into  which  these  differences  coalesce.  And 
the  final  miracle  of  existence  lies,  not  in  the 
swarming  diversity  of  living  forms,  and  in  the 
diverse  laws  of  their  separate  being,  but  in 
the  final  unity  of  their  relationship  to  the  in- 
soluble Purpose  of  their  common  Source. 

Sooner  or  later,  therefore,  the  persistent  ex- 
plorers of  the  by-ways  learn  to  use  their  ac- 
cumulated building-blocks  of  experienced  di- 
versity for  the  reading  of  books  dealing  with 
unifying  relationships  —  books  not  of  anal- 
ysis, but  of  synthesis  —  books  which,  in  a 
human  instead  of  a  theological  sense,  we 
must  call  books  of  a  spiritual  appeal: — -  the 
great  novel  scenarios  of  the  deep-seeing,  the 
great  philosophic  card-castles  of  the  thinkers, 
the  great  poetic  prophecies  of  the  seers,  the 
many-sided  gospels  of  the  elect. 

xv 

Here,  then,  is  the  sense  of  direction  that 
we  have  been  seeking. 

138 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

But  it  is  more  than  a  sense  of  direction.  It 
is  the  road  itself.  It  is  the  inclusive  highway 
of  all  our  individual  adventures.  For  it  is  the 
unbuoyed  but  inevitable  channel  of  the  mind. 
Along  it,  if  we  are  to  move  at  all,  we  must 
make  our  way.  And  while  it  is  wide  enough 
to  accommodate  us  all,  and  deep  enough  to 
float  genius  itself,  yet  no  flat-bottomed  skiff 
of  human  intelligence  is  of  such  light  draught 
that  it  will  not  ground  on  the  mud  flats  at  the 
channel's  edge  if  the  course  be  lost. 

The  woman  referred  to  some  pages  back, 
the  one  of  forty-odd  who  still  plays  at  paper 
dolls  and  chortles  over  nursery  rhymes,  is 
hard  aground  at  the  very  entrance  to  the  fair- 
way —  the  machinery  of  her  mind,  poor  soul, 
disabled  in  a  collision  between  her  head  and 
the  carriage-block  when  the  nurse  dropped 
her  at  the  age  of  two. 

But  there  are  more  kinds  of  arrested  devel- 
opment than  are  diagnosed  by  the  doctors. 

Those  other  women  —  there  are  thousands 
of  them  —  who  never  read  anything  but  love- 
stories  —  the  same  old  love-stories  with  the 
same  old  plots  and  the  same  old  situations, 
everlastingly  ripped  and  turned  and  sponged 

139 


HOW  TO  READ 

and  pressed  and  refurbished  and  retrimmed, 
but  always  modeled  on  the  same  adolescent 
dream  and  the  same  sixteen-year-old  idealism 
—  they  too  are  hard  aground  a  few  years  up 
the  course. 

And  those  men  —  there  are  thousands  of 
them  —  who  vary  the  breakfast  business- 
beer-garden-bed  treadmill  by  reading  endless 
successions  of  adventure  tales  and  detective 
yarns  and  pipe-dreams  of  exotic  action  —  "be- 
cause they  help  to  pass  the  time"  —  they  too 
are  keel-fast:  grounded  on  the  bar  between 
an  over-ripe  adolescence  and  an  undeveloped 
maturity.  They  are  like  mathematicians  who 
spend  their  skill  counting  sheep  to  put  them- 
selves to  sleep. 

xvi 

But  it  is  neither  the  nursery  rhymes,  nor 
the  love-stories,  nor  the  adventure  scenarios 
that  are  at  fault. 

All  these  things  "belong." 

No  illusion  or  delusion,  no  dream  or  desire, 
no  crude  instinct  or  unfolding  impulse  or  con- 
scious ideal  that  is  native  to  humanity,  is  out- 
side the  legitimate  field  of  our  realization  and 

140 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

re-realization  through  reading  —  of  our  re- 
peated "redding  up"  and  of  our  progressive 
formulation  for  ourselves  in  the  constantly 
accumulating  terms  of  our  own  experience. 

The  only  fault,  the  fatal  fault,  is  stagnation 
—  arrested  development. 

Nor  does  this  mean  that  we  should  leave 
nursery  rhymes  behind,  and  love-stories,  and 
adventure  tales.  We  should  n't.  Not  any 
more  than  we  should  kill  the  "child"  in  us, 
or  the  lover,  or  the  sense  of  adventure.  We 
should  carry  these  things  with  us  and  de- 
velop them  as  we  develop.  There  are  nurs- 
ery rhymes  for  every  mile  of  the  way.  There 
are  love-stories  for  every  stage  of  growth. 
There  are  adventures  for  every  enlarge- 
ment of  our  consciousness  and  our  under- 
standing. 

XVII 

But  perhaps  you  will  be  asking  why  I  have 
called  this  channel  "unbuoyed"  when  there 
are  so  many  guide-marks  set  up  by  earlier 
voyagers,  so  many  charts  of  the  best  reading, 
so  many  pilot-critics  ready  to  come  aboard 
and  steer  for  us. 

141 


HOW  TO  READ 

I  am  not  for  a  moment  suggesting  that  you 
should  discard  any  of  these  aids  to  navigation. 
But  if  you  will  recall  our  discovery  as  to  how 
we  get  our  meanings  for  words  —  by  react- 
ing spontaneously  to  them  and  subsequently 
criticizing  the  reactions;  and  if  you  will  re- 
member our  noting  the  similar  source  of 
all  life's  meanings  for  us  —  the  subsequent 
weighing  and  valuing  of  our  actual,  spontane- 
ous, personal  responses  to  life's  stimuli;  and  if 
you  will  remember  our  final  conclusion  that 
"culture"  in  any  form  is  only  derivable  from 
books  at  all  because  reading  is  a  form  of  living 
in  that  things  actually  happen  in  us  when  we 
read,  —  you  will  see  why  I  used  this  word. 

All  these  buoyed  courses  of  reading,  all 
these  charts  of  other  voyagings,  all  these  au- 
thorities on  the  shortest  routes  to  selected 
destinations,  invaluable  as  they  are  and  most 
needful  to  be  used  by  us  to  the  fullest  of  their 
real  power  to  serve  us,  are,  and  can  only  be, 
aids  to  intelligent  experimentation  on  our  in- 
dividual parts. 

For  what  actually  happens  in  us  when  we 
read,  and  the  way  we  combine  these  actual 
happenings  with  all  that  has  previously  hap- 

142 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

pened  in  us  both  in  living  and  reading  —  this 
is  the  sole,  the  determining,  the  final  reality 
for  each  of  us.  And  when  we  have  studied  all 
the  charts  there  are,  when  we  have  listened  to 
all  the  advice  that  is  offered  to  us,  all  actual 
progress  toward  our  ultimate  destination 
(whatever  that  may  be)  is  made  by  our  push- 
ing ahead,  up  channel,  and  taking  soundings 
as  we  go. 

XVIII 

It  is  no  part  of  the  purpose  of  this  book  to 
influence  your  choice  of  a  goal. 

We  all  start  from  the  same  port  and  none  of 
us  are  "bound  through"  —  for  the  channel  is 
longer  than  our  individual  lives  and  lengthens 
with  the  life  of  the  race.  But  we  sail,  under 
sealed  orders,  bound  for  many  havens.  No 
two  of  us  have  the  same  equipment,  the  same 
driving  power,  the  same  draught,  or  the  same 
radius  of  possible  attainment.  We  are  all  born 
with  a  multitude  of  latent  tendencies.  We 
develop,  or  fail  to  develop,  these  in  different 
orders  and  in  different  degrees  as  we  go.  And 
as  we  variously  increase  this  development, 
we  variously  enlarge  our  outlooks  and  alter 

H3 


HOW  TO  READ 

our  conscious  objectives.  And  there  are  as 
many  resultant  routes  as  there  are  points 
of  destination  and  people  moving  toward 
them. 

But  it  is  all  the  same  from  the  standpoint 
of  our  present  inquiry. 

Our  aim  in  reading  may  be  the  most  aim- 
less pursuit  of  pleasure.  Or  it  may  be  the 
most  concentrated  utilitarian  seeking  for 
knowledge.  Or  it  may  be  the  most  many- 
sided  desire  for  self-enhancement  through 
coordinated  understanding.  It  may  all  be 
done  through  "wanting  to  forget,"  or  through 
"wanting  to  play,"  or  through  "wanting  to 
know,"  or  through  such  alternations  or  com- 
binations of  these  reasons  as  develop  with 
our  development.  It  makes  no  difference  to 
our  present  inquiry.  For  the  force  behind 
any  one  of  these  urges,  or  the  force  behind 
any  possible  combination  of  them,  can  only 
expend  itself  either  in  driving  us  along  some 
personal  line  of  development  in  the  direction 
that  we  have  just  determined  and  have  called 
the  inevitable  channel  of  the  mind,  or  in  driv- 
ing us  rudderlessly  round  and  round  some 
vicious  circle  of  stagnation. 

144 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 


XIX 

Fortunately  we  now  hold  in  our  hands  two 
mariners'  instruments  of  precision  to  help  us 
in  navigating  this  channel  —  a  sextant  with 
which  to  locate  our  position  on  the  course, 
and  a  compass  to  tell  us  when  we  are  headed 
right. 

Standing  at  noon  with  a  sextant  to  his  eye, 
the  sailor,  by  measuring  the  height  of  the  sun 
above  the  ocean's  rim,  can  figure  his  latitude 
in  mid-Atlantic.  And  any  one  of  us  who  will 
measure,  with  the  glass  of  honest  self-scrutiny, 
the  height  of  his  interest  in  life  above  the  mean 
level  of  new-fledged  grown-up-ism,  can  locate 
his  position  on  the  chart  and  stick  a  pin  in  it. 

As  for  the  compass,  it  is  a  delicate  instru- 
ment, but  very  simple.  In  reading,  as  we  are 
now  aware,  we  know  but  two  urges  to  action. 
The  first  of  these,  the  impulse  to  "find  our- 
selves," no  matter  how  casual  or  how  con- 
centrated its  manifesting  may  be,  is  always  in 
some  shape  a  seeking  for  truth.  To  the  second, 
the  impulse  to  "escape  from  ourselves,"  two 
courses  are  open.  It  may  turn  from  a  truth- 
quest  that  has  tired  us  to  a  truth-quest  that 

145 


HOW  TO  READ 

stimulates,  amuses,  or  allures  —  may  seek  a 
change  of  truth,  like  a  city-dweller  seeking  the 
sea,  or  a  hillsman  descending  to  the  plains. 
Or  it  may  turn  from  the  discouragement  of 
living  to  the  anodyne  of  reading  lies  about 
life. 

And  the  arrow  of  this  interest  impulse,  for- 
ever oscillating  on  the  pivot  of  our  mood,  is 
the  needle  of  the  compass.  When,  and  only 
when,  it  swings  toward  truth,  it  points  the 
channel. 

And  "truth"? 

Inevitably  at  this  point  the  Pontius  Pilate  in 
us  —  the  finite  in  us,  saving  its  face  before  the 
infinite — shrugs  its  shoulders  and  asks  the 
unanswerable  question,  "What  is  Truth?" 

But  let  us  not  drag  this  metaphysical  anise- 
seed  bag  across  the  trail  of  our  inquiry. 

A  human  philosopher,  trying  to  take  in 
Truth  with  a  capital  Tin  order  to  define  it,  is 
like  a  Spanish  mackerel,  trying  to  swallow 
the  ocean  in  which  it  swims  in  order  to  com- 
prehend it.  Many  fishes  have  drowned  and 
many  philosophers  gone  mad  in  the  frantic 
gluttony  of  these  ambitions.  So  let  us  be  at 
once  more  moderate  and  more  practical.  Let 
146 


A  SENSE  OF  DIRECTION 

us  write  "truth "  with  the  lower  case  t  of  our 
mortal  limitations  and  define  it  in  terms  of 
the  only  pursuit  of  it  that  is  open  to  us  —  a 
seeking-out  of  the  discoverable  relationships 
between  the  world  inside  us  and  the  world 
without. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   WORLD    OUTSIDE    US    AND   THE 
WORLD    WITHIN 

I 

The  pursuit  of  truth  as  we  have  just  defined 
it  —  the  searching-out  of  discoverable  rela- 
tionships between  the  life  within  us  and  the 
life  without  —  is  not  a  new  or  a  specialized 
activity  that  is  here  being  presented  as  worthy 
of  your  attention.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  an- 
other of  those  things  that  we  have  all  been 
doing — another  of  those  basic,  inevitable, 
and  universal  activities  that  we  have  all  been 
engaged  in,  sometimes  consciously,  but  far 
more  often  without  realizing  it,  in  every  hour 
of  our  lives  and  in  every  paragraph  of  our 
reading. 

And  it  is  the  purpose  of  the  present  chapter 
to  do  three  things:  (i)  To  bring  home  to  each 
of  us,  in  the  familiar  and  recognizable  terms 
of  our  common  knowledge  and  experience,  the 
fact  that  the  searching-out  of  these  relation- 
ships is,  quite  simply  and  literally,  the  essen- 

148 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

tial  reality  of  what  we  are  actually  and  con- 
stantly doing  when  we  read.  (2)  To  show  the 
immense  advantage  we  can  gain  for  ourselves 
by  reading  with  this  understanding  as  an  op- 
erative part  of  our  equipment.  And  (3)  to 
point  out  a  few  practical  ways  of  applying  the 
lever  of  this  advantage  in  our  actual  practice. 

11 

We  all  realize  at  once  that  the  investiga- 
tions and  experiments  of  a  Pasteur  are  search- 
ings  for  relationships  between  the  life  inside 
us  and  the  life  outside. 

We  see  at  a  glance  that  the  physician,  and 
the  bacteriologist,  and  the  organic  chemist, 
and  the  comparative  psychologist,  and  the 
philosopher,  and  the  theologian,  are  all,  quite 
literally,  pursuing  truth  in  these  terms. 

But  we  do  not,  as  a  rule,  realize  that  every 
man  and  woman  who  reads  in  the  morning 
paper  a  paragraph  describing  a  tenement  fire, 
or  a  society  ball,  or  a  murder  in  the  slums,  is 
doing  the  same  thing.  Indeed,  if  we  happen 
never  to  have  thought  of  the  matter  from  this 
angle,  this  statement  of  it  appears  wholly 
absurd  to  us.    The  idea  involved  is  one  that 

149 


HOW  TO   READ 

we  have  never  "distilled"  and  haven't  in 
stock.  It  is  an  idea  that  cannot,  by  being 
stated,  be  put  into  our  heads.  But  it  happens 
to  be  a  realization  the  necessary  ingredients 
of  which  we  now  have  on  hand  and  can  there- 
fore proceed  to  compound. 

in 

If  there  is  one  fact  that  we  have  grown 
thoroughly  to  understand  and  accept,  it  is  the 
fact  that  we  have  nothing  to  read  with  except 
our  own  experience  —  the  seeing  and  hearing 
and  smelling  and  tasting  and  touching  that 
we  have  done;  the  fearing  and  hoping  and 
hating  and  loving  that  has  happened  in  us; 
the  intellectual  and  spiritual  reactions  that 
have  resulted;  and  the  assumptions,  under- 
standings, prides,  prejudices,  hypocrisies,  fer- 
vors, foolishnesses,  finenesses,  and  faiths  that 
have  thereby  been  precipitated  in  us  like 
crystals  in  a  chemist's  tube. 

We  are  all,  therefore,  quite  ready  to  nod  our 
heads  in  agreement  over  the  statement  that 
we  read  in  terms  of  mental  conceptions  made 
out  of  this  accumulated  experience,  just  as  a 
child  builds  castles  from  its  wooden  blocks. 

ISO 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

We  are,  in  other  words,  agreed  upon  the 
character  of  our  building-material. 

But  we  have  not,  as  yet,  turned  the  spot- 
light of  our  inquiry  upon  the  character  of 
these  buildings  themselves.  We  have  not  yet, 
except  by  the  vaguest  of  implications,  de- 
termined what  it  is  that  these  outwardly  dis- 
similar structures,  that  we  are  forever  build- 
ing up  and  tearing  down  again  on  the  nursery 
floors  of  our  imagination,  really  represent. 
And  this  is  the  question  that  we  are  now  about 
to  ask  ourselves. 

When  we  rustle  the  pages  of  the  "Morning 
Advertiser"  or  open  the  "Evening  Howl"; 
when  we  read  the  current  numbers  of  our 
favorite  magazines;  when  we  enter  the  lists 
with  Ivanhoe  or  camp  with  Achilles  before 
Troy;  when  we  repeople  the  cave-man's  cave 
or  fore-furnish  the  mansions  of  the  blessed,  — 
what  is  the  real  character  of  the  castles  we  are 
rearing  with  our  building-blocks  of  past  ex- 
perience? 

Let  us  put  the  cart  before  the  horse  and 
face  the  answer  before  we  pursue  the  inquiry: 
All  these  structures  represent  ourselves. 

Of  course  I  know  that  in  reading  this  sen- 

151 


HOW  TO   READ 

tence  you  are  setting  me  down  as  a  cynic. 
You  have  an  uncomfortable  feeling  that  I  am 
"knocking"  human  nature.  You  would  like 
to  think  that  you  are  a  bit  bruised  in  your 
idealism.  But  I  have  hopes  of  regaining  your 
confidence.  For,  to  begin  with,  it  is  not  the  es- 
sential you  that  is  shocked  by  this  statement; 
it  is  some  of  those  "assumptions,  prejudices, 
and  hypocrisies  that  have  been  precipitated 
in  you"  that  are  shocked.  The  essential 
you  makes  an  involuntary  motion  of  recog- 
nition toward  the  statement  and  is  shame- 
facedly ready,  somehow,  to  rejoice  in  it.  And, 
as  we  shall  see  presently,  the  essential  you  is 
eminently  right.  For  it  is  ourselves  —  our- 
selves subdivided  and  reassembled,  ourselves 
dressed  up  and  disguised  and  commissioned  to 
play  a  part,  ourselves  outfitted  and  sent  forth 
on  adventure-tours  of  investigation,  and  then 
recalled  to  make  reports  —  that  we  read  with. 
And  in  this  complex  and  many-mannered 
reaching  out  and  harking  back  it  is  ourselves 
that  we  are,  in  endless  alternation,  building 
into  and  building  out  of  the  world  as  we  go. 
But  let  me  introduce  you  to  a  young  castle- 
builder  that  I  met  the  other  day. 

152 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

IV 

He  was  standing,  straddle-legged,  on  River- 
side Drive,  looking  down  to  one  of  the  jutting 
piers  from  which  covered  carts  of  ashes  were 
being  dumped  into  waiting  scows.  He  was 
about  five  —  dressed  in  a  sort  of  tight-fitting 
union  suit,  hand-knitted  out  of  white  wool. 
And  as  I  passed  him  I  heard  him  announce 
to  his  nurse  in  tones  of  irrevocable  deci- 
sion, "When  I'm  big  I'm  going  to  be  an  ash- 
man." 

Now  the  chances  are  that  before  the  news  of 
his  determination  reaches  you  he  will  have 
changed  his  mind.  He  may  even,  meanwhile, 
have  made  and  unmade  other  choices  of  pro- 
fession. And  the  odds  are  overwhelmingly  in 
favor  of  his  ultimately  turning  out  something 
widely  different  from  them  all  —  say  a  stock- 
broker. But  somewhere,  deep  down  inside  the 
bank  president  or  bookkeeper  that  he  and  Life 
will  some  day  compromise  on  his  becoming, 
there  will  remain  that  ashman  possibility  ■ — - 
that  undeveloped  ashman-self  —  that  I  re- 
cently saw  him  in  the  act  of  realizing.  There 
will   remain,  also,  the  policeman  possibility, 

153 


HOW  TO  READ 

and  the  possibilities  of  the  engine-driver,  the 
plumber's  assistant,  the  recruiting  sergeant, 
the  drum  major,  and  the  sandwich  man,  each 
of  which  he  will  for  a  while  have  seen  himself 
capable  of  being.  And  there  will  remain  other 
deep-buried  possibilities.  Hundreds  —  thou- 
sands—  of  possibilities  and  of  combinations  of 
them.  There  will  be  possibilities  that  he  will 
have  glimpsed  and  forgotten.  There  will  be 
possibilities  that  he  will  have  developed  a 
little  and  abandoned.  There  will  be  possibili- 
ties the  existence  of  which  he  will  never  have 
so  much  as  suspected.  In  short,  there  will  be 
in  him  the  more  or  less  undeveloped  germs  of 
all  the  innumerable  potential  selves  that  life, 
as  he  will  have  lived  it,  will  have  given  him  no 
chance  to  be. 

And  this,  at  the  moment  that  you  read 
these  words,  is  true  of  you.  It  is  true  of  me 
as  I  write  them.  It  is  true  of  us  all.  We  are 
populous  with  unrealized  selves:  with  might- 
have-been's;  with  partially-were's;  with  some- 
times-are's;  with  may-yet-be's.  And  the  char- 
acter-structures that  we  rear  when  we  are 
reading  are  working  models  of  these  potential 
selves. 

154 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

v 

When,  a  moment  since,  I  spoke  of  "entering 
the  lists  with  Ivanhoe,"  I  spoke  inaccurately 
on  purpose  in  order,  now,  to  call  your  atten- 
tion to  the  truth.  We  do  not  "enter  the  lists 
with  Ivanhoe."  We  enter  the  lists  as  Ivanhoe. 
When  we  read  Homer,  we  do  not  "camp  with 
Achilles  before  Troy."  What  really  happens 
is  this:  Out  of  the  experience-material  at  our 
command,  —  out  of  our  visits  to  militia  en- 
campments, perhaps,  and  to  museums,  out  of 
our  own  tent  experience  on  fishing  trips  or  at 
garden  parties,  out  of  our  memories  of  pic- 
tures and  our  realizations  from  other  reading, 
—  we  contrive  the  Homeric  encampment  on 
the  Trojan  plain.  We  erect,  more  or  less  viv- 
idly and  informedly  according  to  our  habit 
and  our  equipment,  the  hero's  tent  with  the 
shields  hung  upon  its  outer  walls  and  the 
spears  set  up  before  its  tight-closed  door.  And 
having  done  all  this  we  install  therein  a  work- 
ing model  of  Achilles  made  out  of  our  own  at- 
tributes. It  is  not  Achilles  who  hides  behind 
that  imagined  canvas.  It  is  some  quickly 
achieved  amalgam  of  our  touchy  selves  and 

155 


HOW  TO  READ 

of  the  potential  hero  lurking  in  us,  that  sulks 
there  while  the  armies  wait.  And  it  is  the 
same  when  we  read  of  a  murder  in  the  "Even- 
ing Howl."  It  is  not  the  actual  murderer  who 
then  reenacts  his  crime,  or  the  actual  victim 
who  dies  another  death.  It  is  the  potential 
assassin  in  us  who  lifts  a  knife,  and  the  po- 
tential victim  in  us  who  shudders  as  she  drops. 

And  yet,  this  is  only  half  the  truth. 

For  having,  out  of  our  own  potentialities, 
made  an  Ivanhoe  to  ride  into  the  lists,  we  re- 
tire, as  it  were,  to  the  side-lines  and  watch  the 
Ivanhoe  we  have  created  and  sent  forth.  Hav- 
ing contrived  a  personal  and  heroically  sulky 
Achilles  out  of  our  own  attributes,  we  straight- 
way scale  the  imagined  walls  of  Troy  and  look 
down  with  new  eyes  upon  the  ancient  world. 
Having  made  a  murderer  and  a  victim  out  of 
the  might-have-been's  and  the  may-yet-be's 
within  us,  we  sit,  as  it  were,  in  reserved  seats 
at  our  own  movies,  and  experience  (in  vary- 
ing degrees  according  to  our  natures  and  our 
moods  at  the  moment)  the  passions  of  par- 
ticipants and  the  emotions  of  onlookers. 

In  fine,  having,  at  the  instigation  of  the 
author,  explored  a  new  corner  of  the  world 

i56 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

within  us  and  made  a  new  synthesis  of  what 
we  found  there,  we  proceed,  in  the  person  of 
the  character  thus  created,  to  explore  new 
aspects  of  the  outer  world. 

VI 

Let  us  pause  a  moment,  here,  to  draw  a 
subtle  yet  highly  important  distinction.  In 
every  elaborate  narrative,  historical,  fictional, 
or  what-not,  there  are  figures  —  men,  women, 
and  children  —  that  we  visualize,  whose 
words  we  listen  to,  whose  actions  we  vita- 
graph,  whose  very  heft  and  bulk  and,  it  may 
be,  contact  with  ourselves,  we  vividly  realize 
and  are  aware  of;  yet  with  whom  we  do  not  at 
all,  in  the  sense  above  set  forth,  identify  our- 
selves. And  the  fact  that  we  do  not,  any  more 
than  if  they  were  trees  or  houses  or  other  in- 
animate portions  of  the  external  world,  con- 
struct these  figures  as  working  models  of  our 
potential  selves,  may  seem,  at  first  glance,  to 
vitiate  the  analysis  and  exposition  above  ar- 
rived at. 

But  a  moment's  consideration  will  suffice  to 
give  us  the  explanation.  These  figures  are  mere 
objects  in  the  external  world.    The  fact  that 

157 


HOW  TO  READ 

they  are  animate  objects  —  the  fact  that  they 
are  animate  human  objects  even  —  does  not 
in  the  least  alter  their  relation  of  externality 
to  the  character  or  characters  with  whom  for 
the  moment  we  are  ourselves  identified. 

But  mark  the  change  that  may,  at  any 
moment,  take  place  in  the  equilibrium  of  our 
attitude.  Let  one  of  these  figures  cease  to  be 
a  mere  animated  object  in  the  story's  world, 
and  become,  for  a  page  or  a  paragraph  even, 
the  experiencing  subject  of  the  story's  emotions, 
let  one  of  them  change,  for  so  little  as  two 
minutes,  from  being  a  part  of  that  outer- 
world-that-is-being-explored  and  become  the 
explorer,  and  instantly  we  begin  to  "judge 
him  by  ourselves,"  to  "put  ourselves  in  his 
place."  In  the  one  case  we  construct  these 
figures,  exactly  as  we  construct  the  trees  and 
houses,  the  horses  and  cattle  of  the  story's 
requirements,  from  the  stored  observation 
and  accumulated  materialism  of  our  past  ex- 
perience. In  the  other  we  construct  them,  no 
matter  how  fleetingly  and  sketchily,  as  vicari- 
ous embodiments  of  our  potential  selves.  In 
the  one  case  we  regard  them  as  a  part  of  that 
"world  outside  us"  with  which  we  are  seeking 

I58 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

discoverable  relationships.  In  the  other  case 
we  regard  them  as  a  phase  of  the  "world 
within  us"  momentarily  dramatized  and  en- 
gaged in  the  search. 

VII 

And  this  brings  us  to  a  point  where,  as  the 
children  say,  we  are  "very  warm."  We  are 
now  so  near  to  the  idea  that  we  have  set  out  to 
grasp  and  make  our  own  that  we  should  only 
need,  if  we  knew  the  way,  to  reach  out  the 
fingers  of  our  minds  and  curl  them  round  it. 

We  have  discovered  the  character  of  the 
buildings  that  we  are  constantly  erecting,  as 
we  read,  out  of  the  building-blocks  of  our  past 
living.  We  know  now  that  all  these  structures 
represent,  either  phases  of  the  world  within 
us,  or  phases  of  the  world  without.  And  we 
know  that  in  all  our  reading  we  are  in  some 
manner  confronting  some  potentiality  of  our 
own  with  some  conceivable  situation.  As  yet,  it 
is  true,  we  have  only  demonstrated  these  facts 
with  regard  to  fiction,  history,  epic  poetry,  or 
some  form  of  narrative  composition.  But  we 
shall  shortly  satisfy  ourselves  that  the  same 
conditions   hold  true  in  the  reading  of  the 

159 


HOW  TO  READ 

driest  scientific  treatise  or  of  the  most  ab- 
stract philosophical  speculation. 

It  only  remains,  therefore,  for  us  to  con- 
vince ourselves  —  not  on  the  authority  of 
some  one's  say-so,  but  from  our  own  criticism 
of  our  own  experience  —  that  the  actual  rele- 
vancy to  ourselves  of  these  constantly  varied 
confrontations,  and  the  source  of  the  enjoy- 
ment derived  from  making  them,  lies,  as  we 
have  assumed,  in  their  being  seekings-out  of 
discoverable  relationships  between  the  two 
worlds  from  which  they  are  taken. 

Let  us  see  if  we  can  do  this. 

You  and  I  and  almost  every  American  of 
our  generation  have,  at  some  flaming  moment 
of  realization,  thanked  God  that  he  or  she  had 
not  been  handicapped  as  was  Helen  Keller; 
and  have  marveled  at  the  triumph  of  her  al- 
most incredible  climbing  out  of  the  prison  of 
herself  into  consciousness  of  the  world  and 
into  communion  with  her  fellow  men.  And 
it  is  even  possible  to  ask  ourselves  whether, 
had  Miss  Keller  not  been  vouchsafed  the 
few  months  of  sight  and  hearing  that  were 
hers  in  infancy,  she  could  later  on  have  been 
released  from  her  solitary  confinement. 

1 60 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

But  we  are  less  likely  to  have  realized  that, 
at  the  instant  of  birth,  every  one  of  us  is  im- 
prisoned, incomunicado,  in  our  undeveloped 
selves;  and  that  it  is  not  in  initial  situation, 
but  in  means  at  hand  for  escape  from  that 
situation,  that  we  differ  from  a  child  born 
into  eternal  darkness  and  unbreakable  silence. 

For  we,  unlike  such  a  misfortunate,  are 
born  into  a  world  visibly  peopled  by  our  kind. 
From  the  first,  the  instructions  of  our  instincts 
are  supplemented  by  impulses  of  imitativeness 
derived  from  without.  We  see,  with  uncom- 
prehending eyes,  long  before  we  are  con- 
sciously stirred  to  perception.  We  suck  in  ex- 
planations through  our  senses  long  before  we 
know  that  we  are  to  have  need  of  them.  But 
such  a  Helen  Keller  as  we  have  imagined, 
having  almost  no  way  of  recognizing  the  exist- 
ence of  others,  would  have  almost  no  way  of 
picking  the  lock  of  her  own  meaning.  It 
would  not  merely  be  that  the  things  that 
touched  her  body  would  be  non-existent  to 
her  except  as  contacts:  the  very  things  that 
she  touched  herself  with  — ■  her  own  fingers  and 
toes  —  would  be  inexplicable  to  her  because 
she  knew  no  others  like  them. 

161 


HOW  TO  READ 

We  have  all,  in  our  time,  thrilled  at  the 
thought  of  Robinson  Crusoe,  discovering  in 
the  sand  of  his  island  beach  a  footprint  that 
was  not  his  own.  But  think  of  some  Helen 
Keller,  marooned  before  she  was  born  on  a  far 
more  isolate  island,  stretching  out  what  she 
did  not  know  was  a  human  hand  and  finding 
in  the  void  a  face  the  facsimile  of  hers! 

That  face  we  can  think  of  as  her  first  book. 
It  would  be  printed  in  raised  characters  for 
the  blind.  Slowly,  like  one  spelling  out  unfa- 
miliar words,  we  can  imagine  her  reading  its 
features  in  terms  of  her  own.  And  then,  in  the 
two-edged  moment  of  final  realization,  we 
can  imagine  her  first  conception  of  personal 
identity  unfold  into  her  first  inkling  of  an 
ordered  world. 

VIII 

But  let  me  tell  you  of  an  actual  experience 
of  my  own. 

Little  by  little,  when  I  was  a  boy,  I  became 
conscious  of  the  fact  that  in  learning  the  al- 
phabet, and  in  learning  to  count,  1  had  some- 
how involuntarily  assigned  positions  in  space 
to  the  letters  and  numerals  of  these  series. 
162 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

Indeed  I  had  built  these  letters  and  numer- 
als into  definite  and  visualizable  structures, 
which  never  changed,  which  were  almost  al- 
ways present  at  the  back  of  my  consciousness 
when  I  was  dealing  with  letters  or  numbers, 
and  upon  which,  as  upon  a  scaffolding,  I  lo- 
cated say  the  letter  P,  or  the  number  45,  when 
I  had  occasion  to  deal  with  either  as  a  part 
of  a  system.  Thus  the  numerals  from  1  to  1 1 
were  to  me  a  set  of  steps  that  led  up  to  a  plat- 
form that  was  12.  Between  this  platform  and 
another  (which  was  20)  the  teens,  like  a  rope 
ladder,  hung  in  a  sagging  curve.  And  from  20 
to  100  the  figures  climbed  in  a  series  of  rigid 
scaling-ladders  of  nine  rungs  each,  that  were 
set  up  between  platforms  that  receded  as  they 
rose.  The  alphabet,  on  the  other  hand,  ran 
directly  away  frorn  me,  rising  and  falling  like 
a  one-track  scenic  railway.  Even  the  Lord's 
Prayer  was  organized.  It  ran  down,  like  a 
trail  into  some  canon,  from  "Our  Father,"  at 
the  top  in  the  sun,  to  a  dark,  deep  bottom 
where  "Amen"  echoed  in  the  gloom. 

And  as  I  grew  older,  and  no  one  in  my  hear- 
ing ever  mentioned  having  such  notions,  I 
came  to  assume  that  no  one  had  them.   I  be- 

163 


HOW  TO  READ 

gan  to  fancy  myself,  in  this  respect,  different 
from  my  kind  —  mentally  deformed.  The 
consciousness  of  the  thing  became  a  secret 
trouble  of  which  I  was  ashamed;  and  there 
were  even  times  when  I  wondered  if  it  might 
not  be  the  beginning  of  insanity. 

And  then,  on  a  happy  evening,  a  youn£ 
physician  of  my  adolescent  acquaintance 
happened  in  the  course  of  conversation  to 
mention  this  almost  universal  child-habit  of 
contriving  space-symbols  for  mind-sequences. 
He  spoke  of  the  fact  that  as  we  grow  up  we 
gradually  cease  to  need  them,  and  hence  dis- 
card and  forget  them;  so  that  many  people  in 
later  life  are  quite  unconscious  of  ever  having 
had  or  used  them.  He  asked  me  whether,  by 
chance,  I  still  remembered  mine. 

Can  you  not  imagine  the  eagerness  with 
which  I  described  to  him  my  prayer-canon, 
my  numerical  scaling-ladders,  my  alphabetical 
scenic  railway?  Can  you  not  picture  the  in- 
terest with  which  I  leaned  over  his  shoulder 
while  he  took  pencil  and  paper  and  drew  for 
me  diagrams  of  his  own  symbol-conceptions 
and  of  those  of  others? 

For  myself,  I  shall  never  forget  that  even- 

164 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

ing.  For  on  it,  like  the  Helen  Keller  we  have 
imagined,  I  reached  out  into  the  dark  and 
found  a  duplicate  of  myself.  On  it  I  got  my 
first  inkling  of  the  truth  I  am  here  illustrating 
for  you. 

IX 

For  it  is  only  as  members  of  a  species  that 
we  are  comprehensible  to  our  own  intelli- 
gence. 

It  is  only  by  our  likeness  to  others  that  we 
understand  ourselves.  It  is  only  by  their  like- 
ness to  us  that  we  understand  others.  And 
these  two  understandings  are  not  independ- 
ent of  each  other  and  separate.  They  are 
complementary  to  each  other  and  reciprocal 
—  like  the  indrawing  and  exhaling  of  our 
breath.  The  life  within  us  and  the  life  with- 
out are  halves  of  a  whole. 

Of  course  it  may  occur  to  you  to  challenge 
the  statement  that  we  only  arrive  at  an  un- 
derstanding either  of  ourselves  or  of  one 
another  through  our  mutual  resemblances; 
because,  for  each  one  of  us,  so  large  a  part  of 
these  reciprocal  understandings  consists  of 
estimated  differences.    But  these  differences, 

165 


HOW  TO  READ 

when  we  come  to  sift  them,  always  turn  out 
to  be  differences  of  degree  and  never  differ- 
ences of  kind.  To  you,  a  ruby  lantern  sus- 
pended in  darkness  may  be  a  jewel  and  a  joy; 
while  a  green  lantern,  similarly  placed,  may  be 
almost  a  matter  of  indifference.  And  to  me 
these  conditions  may  be  reversed.  Yet  if  we 
compare  notes  we  readily  understand  each 
other.  But  a  man  who  was  color  blind,  and  to 
whom,  in  consequence,  red  and  green  were 
utterly  and  forever  undistinguishable,  could 
only  make  shift  to  understand  our  feelings  in 
regard  to  them  by  telling  himself  that,  what- 
ever they  were,  they  must  be  of  a  nature  an- 
alogous to  his  OAvn  feelings  in  regard  to  blue 
and  orange.  And  a  man  born  blind,  although 
from  repeated  assurances  he  might  have  come 
to  accept  it  as  a  fact  that  he  was  somehow 
different  from  us  others,  could  never  in  the 
remotest  sense  conceive  the  nature  of  the 
difference. 

x 

And  what  we  have  thus  come  to  realize  as 
true  in  regard  to  the  life  we  share  with  other 
humans,  is  equally  true  of  the  life  we  share  in 

1 66 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

a  less  complete  manner  with  all  that  is  ani- 
mate on  earth.  It  is  through  their  disclosed 
resemblances  to  ourselves,  and  by  our  conse- 
quent fragmentary  ability  to  "put  ourselves 
in  their  places,"  that  alone  we  are  able  to 
understand  the  impulses  that  move  these 
other  lives  and  to  estimate  the  differences  in 
degree  that  mark  the  gulfs  between  us. 

And  I  hope  that  at  this  point  you  will  cry 
out  in  protest  against  my  apparent  neglect 
of  our  manifest  ability  to  know  the  "facts" 
about  an  insect  or  an  animal  without  in  the 
least  understanding  it  or  caring  to.  For  this 
brings  us  face  to  face  with  the  last  point  nec- 
essary to  be  elucidated  for  the  complete 
grasping  of  the  idea  that  we  are  engaged  in 
introducing  "into  our  heads." 

For  the  only  means  we  have  of  "knowing 
the  facts"  about  an  insect  or  an  animal,  is  the 
noting  of  the  relationships  that  it  bears  to  the 
material  world — that  is  to  say,  to  the  environ- 
ment that  we  share  in  common  with  it.  And 
our  sole  means  of  acquiring  knowledge,  under- 
standing, or  mastery  over  this  environment — ■ 
over  the  world  without  us  —  or  of  instinc- 
tively and  progressively  adapting  ourselves 

167 


HOW  TO  READ 

to  its  iron-clad  requirements,  is  the  conscious 
or  unconscious  seeking-out  of  its  relation- 
ships to  ourselves  —  to  the  world  within  us. 
For  these  two  worlds  are  also  halves  of  a 
whole. 

XI 

Just  as  it  is  true,  then,  that  it  is  only  as 
members  of  a  species  that  we  —  or  it  —  are 
comprehensible  to  our  own  intelligence;  so  it 
is  true  that  it  is  only  as  members  of  the  physi- 
cal universe  that  we  as  such  members,  or  it  as 
such  a  universe,  are  in  any  measure  to  be 
grasped  by  us. 

And  exactly  as  we  read  a  novel,  or  a  history, 
or  an  epic,  or  any  narrative  of  human  activity, 
by  confronting  successive  "characters," — ■ 
successive  dramatized  syntheses  of  our  own 
inner  selves,  —  with  various  aspects  of  the 
world  and  of  life,  so  we  read  a  work  on  mathe- 
matics, or  a  description  of  a  mechanical  de- 
vice, or  a  speculation  in  abstract  science  or 
philosophy,  by  confronting  successive  syntheses 
of  our  previously  gathered  perceptions  and  ideas 
on  the  subject  with  the  successive  new  condi- 
tions proposed  by  the  author. 

168 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

We  do  not  read  this  way  because  we  have 
studied  the  matter  out  and  have  determined 
that  it  is  a  good  way  to  do.  We  do  it  because 
we  are  built  that  way  and  have  to.  We  read 
this  way  because,  the  world  within  us  and  the 
world  without  being  related  as  they  are,  it  is 
the  only  way  we  have  of  reading.  And  all  of 
our  reactions  to  reading  —  all  our  laughter 
and  tears,  all  our  elations  and  depressions,  all 
our  delights  and  disgusts,  our  acceptances  and 
rejections,  our  understandings  and  percep- 
tions and  acquiescences  and  disagreements  — 
are  the  direct  and  sole  result  of  supposedly 
discovered  relationships  between  these  two 
worlds,  made  in  the  course  of  these  mental 
and  imaginative  confrontations.  Thus  laugh- 
ter is  a  reaction  to  relationships  discovered 
where  they  were  least  expected,  or  to  relation- 
ships appearing  to  exist,  but  suddenly  dis- 
covered to  be  preposterous. 

XII 

And  now,  before  we  go  on  to  consider  the 
advantages  we  can  gain  by  making  this  idea 
that  we  have  now  grasped  an  operative  ele- 
ment in  our  actual  reading,  let  us  pause  a 

169 


HOW  TO  READ 

moment  and  look  back,  with  this  new  under- 
standing in  mind,  at  the  separate  steps  of  our 
earlier  inquiry.  We  shall  see  that  the  facts 
that  we  have  there  successively  established 
are  beginning  to  join  hands  in  a  ramifying 
network  of  significance,  and  that  our  previous 
conclusions  are  already  establishing  among 
themselves  cross-references  of  connection. 

When,  for  example,  we  recall  the  first  chap- 
ter of  this  book,  we  see  more  many-sidedly 
than  at  first  why  it  is  only  through  the  story 
that  we  tell  ourselves  that  an  author's  story 
gains  meaning  for  us. 

When  we  remember  our  examination  into 
the  function  of  the  dictionary,  we  see  fresh 
reasons  why  we  have  constantly  to  contrive 
new  meanings  of  our  own  for  the  words  of 
others. 

When  we  now  look  back  at  those  vague  and 
egotistical  sounding  phrases,  "a  desire  to  find 
ourselves"  and  a  desire  to  "get  away  from 
ourselves,"  we  find  that  we  have  acquired 
a  more  complex  but  also  a  more  ordered  con- 
ception of  the  true  meanings  of  these  expres- 
sions; and  that  the  sanctions  that  underlie 
them  have  become  less  questionable  to  us. 

170 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

We  see,  also,  more  clearly  and  comprehend- 
ingly  why  it  is  that  only  those  "meanings" 
(which  is  to  say  those  ideas  of  relationship) 
that  we  have  first  internally  felt  and  then 
objectively  criticized  (which  is  to  say  meas- 
ured up  with  other  accepted  meanings  and 
relationships)  can  —  whether  they  be  the 
meanings  of  words  or  the  meaning  of  the 
world — become  a  part  of  individual  culture 
for  us. 

We  see  new  reasons  why  that  sense  of  direc- 
tion which  we  defined  for  ourselves  in  the  last 
chapter,  and  found  to  coincide  with  the  line  of 
development  of  the  individual  and  the  race,  is 
not  a  matter  of  our  arbitrary  choice,  but  of 
inherent  necessity  —  why  it  is  that  we  must 
somehow  move  along  it,  or  somewhere  stag- 
nate on  the  way. 

We  see,  as  we  could  not  see  at  the  beginning 
of  the  present  chapter,  that  the  living  that  we 
ourselves  do  is  never  really  comprehended  by 
us  until  (with  or  without  the  aid  of  books)  we 
have  read  and  re-read  it  into  other  lives;  and 
that  the  infinitely  various  livingness  of  others 
is  never  really  grasped  by  us  until  we  have 
read  and  re-read  it  into  as  many  as  may  be  of 


HOW  TO  READ 

those  potential  selves  that  life  has  denied  us 
the  chance  to  be. 

And  we  see,  finally,  that  "the  adventure  of 
learning  to  read,"  that  we  spoke  of  on  an 
earlier  page,  —  the  lifelong  adventure  of 
learning  progressively  to  reemploy  the  living 
that  we  do  for  the  further  exploring  of  these 
two  infinitely  interesting  worlds,  —  is  not  two 
adventures,  but  the  inseparable  halves  of  one 
adventure. 

XIII 

And  now  we  come  to  the  second  point  of 
our  present  discussion — the  advantages  that 
will  acrue  to  us  if  we  make  deliberate  use 
of  this  idea  in  our  reading. 

We  have  seen  that  all  our  reactions  to  read- 
ing, no  matter  how  momentary  or  how  mo- 
mentous they  may  be,  are  in  reality  reactions 
to  relationships  consciously  realized  or  uncon- 
sciously sensed  as  existing,  either  directly  be- 
tween some  aspect  of  our  inner  selves  and 
some  aspect  of  the  outer  world,  or  directly  be- 
tween various  aspects  of  the  outer  world,  each 
of  which  bears  its  own  relation  to  our  inner 
selves.    And  what  we  are  really  asking  our- 

172 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

selves  is  how  (since  we  seem  to  achieve  these 
reactions  instinctively  and  spontaneously  and 
without  taking  thought  about  them)  it  can 
possibly  advantage  us  deliberately  to  note 
their  nature  and  consciously  to  inquire  from 
time  to  time  into  their  hidden  meanings. 

And  the  answer  (which  is  twofold)  is  based 
on  the  fact  that  we  are  forced  by  the  very  con- 
ditions of  our  being  either  to  read  on  into  new 
realizations  of  relationship,  or  to  read  round 
and  round  in  the  worn  circle  of  those  we  have. 
And  the  first  half  of  this  answer  is  that  every 
road  of  reading,  no  matter  what  its  character 
may  be  or  what  may  be  our  purpose  in  follow- 
ing it,  will  sooner  or  later  be  blocked  for  us  by 
unrealized  relationships  unless  we  learn  little 
by  little  to  deal  recognizingly  and  inquiringly 
with  relationships  as  they  arise.  And  the  sec- 
ond half  of  the  answer  is  that  every  relation- 
ship thus  consciously  noted  and  more  or  less 
criticized  and  coordinated  with  others  of  its 
kind,  becomes  a  part  of  our  reading  capital  — 
becomes  a  building-block  in  itself,  employable 
at  need  either  as  a  unit  in  future  construc- 
tions, or  as  an  entering  wedge  in  future  analy- 
ses. 

173 


HOW  TO  READ 

XIV 

And  this  brings  us  to  our  third  point  —  the 
problem  of  method. 

How  are  we  to  set  about  developing  this 
seeking-out  of  relationships  into  an  actively 
operative  factor  in  our  actual  reading,  with- 
out making  a  labor  of  what  should  be  an  en- 
grossing adventure  and  a  zestful  satisfying  of 
our  natural  appetites? 

And  before  attempting  to  answer  this  ques- 
tion — ■  before  indicating  a  practicable  ap- 
proach to  a  method  whose  later  developments 
are  always  individual  adaptations  of  personal 
means  to  personal  ends  —  it  will  be  well  for  us 
to  place  before  ourselves,  on  the  one  hand,  a 
reminder,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  a  caution. 

Let  us  be  careful  to  remember,  then,  that  to 
speak  of  our  inborn  and  instinctive  craving 
for  recognized  relationships  between  our  com- 
plex selves  and  our  involved  environment  as 
a  "natural  appetite,"  is  by  no  means  a  figure 
of  speech.  For  a  natural  appetite  is  exactly 
what  this  craving  is.  It  is  as  basic  and  as 
actual  an  appetite  as  that  for  food.  And  just 
as  we  are  guided  to  the  seeking  of  food  by 

174 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

hunger,  so  we  are  guided  to  the  seeking  of  re- 
lationships by  curiosity.  And  just  as  we 
judge  the  food  we  find,  primarily  by  our  un- 
criticized  likes  and  dislikes  of  its  taste  and 
smell,  so  we  judge  the  relationships  we  dis- 
cover, primarily  by  our  uncriticized  likes 
and  dislikes  of  their  implications.  And  just 
as  we  alter  our  appreciations  and  modify  our 
habits  in  regard  to  food,  and  are  influenced 
in  our  later  attitudes  toward  it  by  subtle 
matters  of  digestive  results  and  gustatory 
education,  so  we  gradually  reorganize  our 
standards  of  value  and  extend  our  range  of 
enjoyment  in  the  seeking  of  relationships,  in- 
fluenced thereto  by  the  accumulating  under- 
standings that  are  the  result  of  intellectual 
digestion.  And  this  fact — this  appetite-rela- 
tion that  curiosity  bears  to  our  reading  —  it 
will  be  well  for  us  to  keep  in  mind. 

The  caution  that  we  must  remember,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  that  all  development,  along 
such  lines  and  by  such  steps  as  we  are  about  to 
examine,  is  a  development  and  must  be  gone 
through  stage  by  stage.  The  juggler  who  holds 
us  fascinated  by  the  easy  dexterity  with  which 
he  keeps  eleven  balls  cascading  in  the  air 

175 


HOW  TO   READ 

above  his  hands,  did  not  begin  with  eleven. 
He  began  with  two  —  acquiring,  so  to  say, 
a  muscular  familiarity  with  the  relations  be- 
tween them  and  his  hands  before  adding  a 
third  ball  and  beginning  to  master  the  relation- 
ships thus  complicated.  How  much  more, 
then,  is  it  necessary  for  us  to  be  modest  in  our 
beginnings  in  acquiring  control  over  these  far 
more  tricksy  and  more  mutually  interdepend- 
ent playthings,  the  relationships  with  which 
we  are  now  dealing? 

xv 

The  first  rule,  then,  that  it  behooves  us  to 
observe  for  a  gradual,  unforced,  yet  effective 
approach  to  this  better  reading,  is  that  we 
must  learn  to  look  upon  our  curiosity  as  the 
prompting  of  our  mental  hunger.  We  must,  lit- 
tle by  little,  learn  to  value  our  curiosity  just  as 
we  learn,  little  by  little,  to  value  "appetite." 
And  we  must  learn,  little  by  little,  to  exercise 
something  of  the  same  common  sense  and 
common  caution  in  the  satisfying  of  the  one 
that  we  do  in  the  satisfying  of  the  other. 

The  French  have  a  proverb  which  says  that 
the  man  who  does  not  understand  his  own 

176 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

stomach  at  thirty  is  a  fool.  Let  us  be  honest 
enough  to  apply  this  aphorism  to  our  minds 
also. 

XVI 

It  should  not,  by  now,  be  necessary,  but  it 
may  none  the  less  be  wise,  to  point  out  that 
any  reading  that  we  do  which  is  undertaken 
through  some  impulse  of  "wanting  to  know" 
is  directly  motivated  by  curiosity.  And  that 
any  reading  that  we  do  which  is  undertaken 
through  some  impulse  of  "wanting  to  play" 
is  motivated  by  that  form  of  potential  curios- 
ity that  we  call  "keenness"  and  which  is  at 
the  very  least  a  readiness  to  be  interested.  And 
that  no  reading  undertaken  through  any 
impulse  of  "wanting  to  forget"  can  really  be- 
come effective  of  its  object  unless  one  or  other 
of  these  forms  of  curiosity  shall,  like  hunger 
aroused  by  eating,  be  stirred  to  life  in  us  by 
the  act  of  reading. 

Curiosity,  then,  is  the  only  conscious  stimu- 
lus we  have  to  begin  with;  and  it  continues  to 
be,  throughout  whatever  reading  develop- 
ment may  come  to  us,  the  underlying  motive- 
power  back  of  all  our  seekings,  all  our  find- 

177 


HOW  TO  READ 

ings,  and  all  our  passings-on.  And  the  inten- 
tion of  our  first  rule  is  the  practical  applying 
of  this  knowledge,  by  gradually  learning  to 
regard  as  an  appetite  all  curiosity  or  keen- 
ness that  impels  us  toward  reading,  and  to 
regard  all  the  reading  that  we  do  as  in  some 
sort  a  satisfying  of  an  appetite. 

But  this  being  understood,  it  must  be  noted 
that  overt  curiosity  and  anticipatory  keen- 
ness, and  developing  interest,  are  all,  when  we 
begin  a  book  or  a  magazine  article  or  what- 
not, apt  to  be  of  a  general  or  "blanket"  va- 
riety; and  are  apt,  in  the  main,  to  develop 
cumulatively  along  some  central  and  special- 
ized axis;  as  when,  as  we  frequently  say,  we 
become  "  so  interested  in  a  story  "  that  we  can 
"hardly  wait  to  see  how  it  comes  out."  And 
we  shall  have  occasion  later  on  to  consider  the 
guiding  of  our  curiosity  in  regard  both  to  the 
developing  relationships  involved  in  a  story's 
unfolding  and  to  the  criticizing  of  indicated 
conclusions  involved  in  a  story's  ending.  But 
for  the  moment  we  must  pass  these  larger 
matters  by  in  order  to  examine  certain  minor 
manifestations  of  curiosity  or  interest  that 
more  immediately  concern  us. 

178 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

Please  note,  then,  that,  even  in  reading  the 
most  engrossing  story  in  the  world,  the  swift 
surface  of  the  main  stream  of  our  interest  is 
constantly  flecked  by  floating  feelings  of  lik- 
ing and  disliking;  is  constantly  flawed  by  little 
upwelling  bubbles  of  inquiry;  is  constantly 
dimpled  by  tiny  whirlpools  of  subsidiary  curi- 
osities, —  curiosities  as  to  why's  and  where- 
fore's and  probabilities  and  fittingness,  —  all 
of  which,  as  we  now  know,  are  instinctive 
sensings  or  half-conscious  reachings-out  after 
relationships.  And  this  fact,  so  universally 
common  in  the  experience  of  us  all,  yet  so 
frequently  regarded  with  impatience  or  in- 
difference, brings  us  to  the  formulation  of  our 
second  rule. 

XVII 

For  these  floating  flecks  of  liking  and  dis- 
liking, these  momentary  impulses  of  inquiry 
that  appear  for  a  second  like  bubbles  on  the 
surface  of  our  attention,  these  little  swirls  of 
curiosity  that  form,  and  are  lost  again  as  we 
read  on,  are  not  only  the  actual,  concrete  em- 
bodiments of  those  spontaneous  reactions  to 
"meanings"  that  we  discussed  in  an  earlier 

179 


HOW  TO   READ 

chapter;  but  they  constitute  our  natural 
promptings  toward  the  kind  of  reading  —  the 
reading  that  is  an  adventurous  seeking-out  of 
relationships  between  our  two  worlds  —  that 
we  are  here  discussing. 

Our  second  rule,  therefore,  is  that  we  must 
learn  to  evaluate  our  subsidiary  curiosities. 

How  often  has  it  not  happened  to  each  of 
us,  in  hurrying  across  some  stone-paved 
station  or  down  some  mosaic-floored  hallway, 
to  hear  a  little  tinkle  as  of  metal  on  marble  be- 
hind us,  and  to  half-wonder  for  a  second  what 
it  was,  and  then,  the  next  day,  perhaps,  to 
miss  some  trinket  that  we  valued  and  to  say, 
"There!  That  must  have  been  what  dropped 
when  I  heard  that  noise!" 

The  promptings  of  our  subsidiary  curiosi- 
ties as  we  read  are  the  tinkling  sounds  of  rela- 
tionships dropping  in  our  paths. 


) 


XVIII 

"But,"  you  may  exclaim,  "if  I  am  to  in- 
terrupt my  reading  every  time  that  I  am  con- 
scious of  a  like  or  a  dislike,  every  time  I  ex- 
perience a  tendency  toward  inquiry,  every 
time  I  am  conscious  of  a  blur  of  puzzlement 

1 80 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

or  twinge  of  curiosity,  what  is  to  become  of 
the  'merged  series'  of  my  'mental  movies'?  / 
want  to  read  my  book.  I  don't  want  to  run  an 
intellectual  detective  agency!" 

And  this  objection,  if  any  such  procedure 
were  required  of  us,  would  be  eminently  well 
taken.  But  happily  this  is  not  the  case.  We 
must  learn  to  value  our  subsidiary  curiosities, 
but,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  there  is  a  very 
simple  and  practical  way  of  discriminating 
between  them.  Moreover,  a  large  majority  of 
these  collateral  stirrings  of  our  interest  and 
curiosity  that  are  prompted  by  our  reading, 
are  actually  dealt  with  by  such  instant  and 
hardly  noticed  mental  gestures  as  that  de- 
scribed in  the  case  of  our  reading  of  the  sen- 
tence, "The  bond  that  held  them  together 
was  thus  a  spiritual  tie." 

You  will  now  see,  by  the  way,  that  the 
"meaning"  problem  involved  in  that  sentence 
was,  in  reality,  a  relationship  problem. 

It  is  true  that  the  beginner,  who  is  for  the 
first  time  trying  consciously  to  improve  his 
methods  of  reading  along  these  lines,  will  on 
occasion  be  rendered  self-conscious  by  his  new 
realization  of  the  multiplicity  of  such  prompt- 

1S1 


HOW  TO   READ 

ings.  But  in  practice  he  will  soon  find  that 
most  of  these  matters  are  being  dealt  with 
without,  so  to  put  it,  his  mind's  bothering 
nim  about  them.  For  in  all  our  activities., 
mental  as  well  as  physical,  there  is  a  constantly 
shifting  focus  of  conscious  attention,  upborne 
by  a  whole  sub-system  of  unconscious  ade- 
quacy and  action.  And  one  of  the  first  things 
that  an  observer  learns  about  his  mind  action 
in  reading  is  that,  while  the  conscious  focus  of 
his  intelligence  is  "  reading  his  book,"  another, 
half-conscious  portion  of  his  mental  activity  is 
engaged  in  correcting  slight  errors  of  under- 
standing, picking  up  dropped  stitches  of 
minor  relationship,  and  generally  "redding 
up"  and  keeping  things  decently  shipshape 
behind  him  as  he  goes  along. 

And  as  this  rear-guard  portion  of  one's 
reading  activity  is  quite  as  dependent  as  the 
other  upon  one's  reading  capital  of  past  ex- 
perience, of  already  realized  relationships, 
and  of  previously  cross-referenced  under- 
standings, the  longer  one  practices  the  better 
and  more  purposeful  reading  we  are  consider- 
ing, the  more  quick-witted  and  efficient  and 
joyously  industrious  does  this  half-conscious 

182 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

portion  of  our  mind  become  in  the  prosecu- 
tion of  its  humble  yet  vastly  important  work. 

XIX 

Yet  the  fact  remains  that  there  are  many 
promptings  of  our  subsidiary  curiosity  with 
which  this  half-conscious  and  essentially  co- 
operative portion  of  our  minds  is  incapable  of 
dealing.  There  are,  indeed,  many  more  of 
them  than  we  have  either  time  or  need  to  deal 
with  at  all.  And  so  we  must  discover  some 
touchstone  of  discrimination. 

We  do  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  and  because 
we  have  lost  a  few  lockets  and  cigarette  cases 
and  knives  and  gold  coins  by  neglecting  the 
tinkle  they  made  in  falling,  go  about  forever 
after  investigating  every  sound  we  hear  be- 
hind us,  or  eternally  slapping  all  our  pockets 
in  turn  to  make  sure  that  we  are  missing  noth- 
ing. We  learn,  after  a  while,  to  discriminate 
between  tinkles.  And  this  discernment  is  the 
problem  we  are  now  facing.  Moreover  it  in- 
volves, and  brings  down  to  the  test  of  actual 
practice  (as  I  hope  you  will  see)  some  of  those 
shrewd  distinctions  between  conscious  and 
unconscious  performance  that  we  have  previ- 

183 


HOW  TO  READ 

ously  discussed,  and  some  of  the  principles  of 
deliberate  criticism  and  control  of  spontaneous 
reactions  to  what  we  read  that  we  have  already 
inquired  into. 

xx 

Here,  then,  is  our  third  rule  —  a  rule  upon 
which,  in  the  beginning,  we  can  safely  rely 
for  a  conservative  yet  valid  discrimination 
and  for  a  gradual  but  effective  habit-form- 
ing: 

Never  neglect  any  prompting  of  subsidiary 
curiosity  that  is,  of  itself,  sharp  enough  to  shift, 
though  only  for  a  few  seconds,  the  conscious 
focus  of  your  reading  attention. 

Never,  for  instance,  if  you  are  moved  to 
wonder  whether  or  not  you  would,  in  his  place, 
have  acted  as  a  character  in  your  story  is  sup- 
posed to  act,  fail  to  weigh  the  query  at  least 
roughly  in  the  scales  of  your  own  self-knowl- 
edge. Never  fail,  for  example,  to  follow  out,  to 
the  extent  of  your  actually  aroused  interest, 
the  side  question  of  an  action's  effect  upon 
other  characters  of  the  tale  or  upon  the  tale 
itself.  And  if  it  is  a  scenario  of  ideas  that  you 
are  producing,  instead  of  a  fiction  scenario,  or 

184 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

if  it  is  a  story  of  mechanical  or  chemical  rela- 
tionships that  you  are  reading,  instead  of  a 
story  of  human  relationships,  never  fail  to 
follow  up,  at  least  to  the  momentary  sating  of 
your  aroused  interest,  any  side  issue  of  causal 
relationship  or  of  logical  sequence  that  simi- 
larly forces  itself  upon  your  previously  other- 
wise-engaged attention. 

But  understand  that  this  advice  is  not  for  a 
moment  intended  to  be  taken  as  an  urging  to 
"make  yourself  do  something"  because  you 
feel  it  to  be  "self-educative"  or  in  any  other 
sense  "good  discipline."  It  is,  on  the  con- 
trary, to  be  understood  as  an  urging  to  let 
yourself  do  something  that  you  have  a  natural 
prompting  to  do,  but  which  other  promptings,. 
more  habitually  indulged,  and  thus  grown  into 
tyrannical  spoiled-child  promptings,  are  try- 
ing to  keep  you  from  doing. 

In  other  words,  it  is  not  for  a  moment  a 
priggish,  pedantic,  bluestocking,  high-brow 
attitude  toward  a  natural  and  enjoyable  oc- 
cupation that  is  demanded  of  us.  We  are  not 
asked  to  keep  poking  ourselves  to  see  if  we 
are  alive;  or  to  keep  self-consciously  taking 
our  mental   temperatures    to  see  if  we    are 

185 


HOW  TO   READ 

functioning  normally.  The  fact  is  just  the 
opposite  of  this.  For  right  reading,  in  the  di- 
rection established  in  the  last  chapter,  is  the 
normal  result  of  an  intelligent  following  of 
our  natural  promptings ;  and  wrong  reading  — 
that  is  to  say,  reading  into  some  circle  of  stag- 
nation —  is  always  the  result  of  their  willful 
or  slack-minded  suppression. 

Of  course,  however,  it  goes  without  saying 
that,  as  one  cannot  control  a  spoiled  child 
without  effort,  so  one  cannot  control  a  clam- 
orous, over-indulged,  hurry-along-with-the- 
main-story  curiosity  without  some  exercise  of 
will  power.  And  unless  this  spoiled-child 
curiosity  is  controlled  and  made  to  behave,  it 
is  impossible  for  us  to  give  play  even  to  the 
most  immediately  alluring  and  ultimately 
valuable  of  our  subsidiary  curiosities.  This 
much  of  willing  effort  we  must  make,  then; 
this  much  of  "self-discipline"  we  must  prac- 
tice, and  must  persevere  in  in  spite  of  initial 
failures  and  forgettings,  before  we  can  learn  to 
apply  this  most  obvious  and  natural  rule  for 
getting  started  on  the  new  road. 


1 86 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

XXI 

And  here,  for  the  moment,  we  might  leave 
the  matter.  For  once  a  reader  has  learned 
something  of  the  quickly  accumulating  read- 
ing capital  that  piles  up  in  him  through  a  fol- 
lowing of  these  basic  rules,  and  begins  to  dis- 
cover the  enhancement  of  his  own  enjoyment 
in  reading  (whatever  the  character  of  that 
enjoyment  may  be)  that  flows  from  that 
capital's  automatic  reinvestment,  he  will  in- 
evitably begin  to  develop  his  personal  adapta- 
tions to  the  new  method.  And  as  soon  as  we 
reach  this  border-land  of  personal  adaptation, 
we  approach  that  country  of  individual  likes 
and  dislikes,  of  personal  reachings-out  and 
drawings-back,  of  temperamental  tendencies, 
and  intellectual  affinities  of  affiliation,  that 
can  never  (unless  it  be  by  some  "psycho- 
analyst" dependent  on  our  aid)  be  mapped 
out  for  us  in  advance  by  others. 

But  there  is  one  helpful  suggestion  that 
may  be  made  before  we  go  on  to  the  consider- 
ation of  other  aspects  of  our  inquiry. 

It  is  quite  evident  that  in  reading  any  arti- 
cle or  essay  or  book  that  contains  a  developed 

187 


HOW  TO   READ 

theme, —  fictional,  argumentative,  demon- 
strational,  or  what-not,  —  the  intelligent 
reader,  no  matter  what  his  personal  idiosyn- 
cracies  of  method  may  be,  must  maintain 
some  sort  of  just  balance  between  the  mass  of 
subsidiary  interests  we  have  been  discussing, 
and  the  main  interest  of  the  theme  itself.  And, 
since,  the  more  cross-referenced  ideas  of  rela- 
tionship a  reader  possesses,  the  more  numer- 
ous will  be  his  incidental  promptings  toward 
the  indulging  of  subsidiary  curiosities,  it  fol- 
lows that  he  must,  more  and  more  as  he  goes 
on,  pick  and  choose  between  these  prompt- 
ings. 

And  we  happen  to  be  so  built  that  our  un- 
directed choice  is  almost  certain  to  fall  upon 
those  curiosities  that  have  to  do  with  our  re- 
actions of  liking;  while  we  are  apt  to  set  aside 
and  suppress  those  curiosities  (as  to  deriva- 
tions and  results,  as  to  "why's"  and  "what- 
then's")  that  have  to  do  with  reactions  of 
disliking. 

The  suggestion  that  I  have  to  make,  then, 
is  that  you  little  by  little  form  the  deliberate 
habit  of  directing  your  choice  toward  the  in- 
dulging of  any  curiosities  as  to  the  nature  and 

188 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

meanings  of  instinctive  dislikes  that  you  may 
be  lucky  enough  to  have. 

And  the  reason  for  this  is  very  simple. 

We  have  already  seen  that,  sooner  or  later, 
any  road  of  reading  that  we  may  elect  to  fol- ; 
low  will  be  blocked  for  us  by  unrealized  rela- 
tionships if  we  have  not  dealt  recognizingly 
and  inquiringly  with  earlier  and  underlying 
relationships  as  these  presented  themselves. 
And  it  so  happens  that  the  hidden  relation- 
ships involved  in  our  reactions  of  liking  will, 
comparatively  speaking  and  in  the  long  run, 
take  care  of  themselves.  For  when  we  experi- 
ence a  reaction  of  liking,  we  welcome  it.  And 
when  we  reexperience  it  we  re-welcome  it;  and 
even  savor  the  recognition  and,  as  it  were, 
roll  it  for  an  instant  under  the  tongue  of  our 
intelligence.  So  that  little  by  little  we  tend, 
without  any  other  effort  on  our  parts  and  by 
the  unconscious  chemic  of  our  minds,  to  re- 
solve it  into  its  component  elements. 

But  with  a  reaction  of  dislike  it  is  very  dif- 
ferent. The  first  few  times  that  we  experience 
it  we  may  have  a  prompting  of  curiosity  as  to 
its  nature  and  as  to  the  relationships  involved 
in  our  recoil  from  it.    But  if  we  continue  to 

189 


HOW  TO  READ 

ignore  these,  we  soon  form  the  habit  of  dodging 
the  reaction.  Instead  of  savoring  it  and  rolling 
it  under  our  tongue,  we  spit  it  out  at  the  first; 
taste.  And  in  the  end  (since  some  kind  of  a 
"reason  why"  our  minds  must  have  to  be 
happy)  we  are  as  like  as  not  to  substitute  a 
prejudice  for  an  understanding,  and  to  accept 
some  cant  phrase  of  our  own  or  of  some  one 
else's  in  lieu  of  an  explanation,  and  thus  to  es- 
tablish once  for  all  an  "  unrealized  relation- 
ship" that  may  block  some  future  road  for  us 
with  stagnating  results. 

XXII 

We  constantly  and  as  a  matter  of  common 
caution  establish  for  ourselves  in  our  every- 
day living  such  arbitrary  reminders  as  this,  of 
things  that  we  know  it  would  be  well  for  us  to 
do,  but  which  we  are  prone  to  neglect. 

The  "shifting  focus  of  our  attention,"  even 
in  such  matters  as  going  down  town  and  com- 
ing back  again,  cannot  safely  be  left  to  work 
out  its  own  salvation.  It  is  because  of  this  — ■ 
because  each  one  of  the  two  hundred  hurrying 
humans  who  are  crowding  into  a  subway  ex- 
press is  consciously  hurrying,  or  consciously 

190 


WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

keeping  himself  from  being  crushed,  or  con- 
sciously thinking  out  some  left-over  business 
problem,  or  consciously  forecasting  some  evening 
pleasure^  instead  of  consciously  putting  one  foot 
in  front  of  the  other  —  that  we  keep  a  guard  on 
the  subway  platform  to  call  out  to  them, 
"watch  your  step!"  —  "watch  your  step!" 
—  "watch  —  step!"  And  a  device  that  we 
thus  employ  in  the  machinery  of  our  daily 
lives  may  well  be  adapted  for  use  in  the  ma- 
chinery of  our  daily  reading. 

Suppose,  then,  that  as  a  beginning  you  ac- 
custom yourself  to  regard  any  prompting  of 
natural  curiosity  or  interest  you  may  have  in 
regard  to  any  feeling  of  distaste  or  disliking, 
as  an  official  cry  of  "Watch  your  step!"  Later 
on,  you  will  find  it  easy  and  expedient  to  ar- 
range other  signals  of  predetermined  signif- 
icance and  watch-dogs  of  helpful  reminder  to 
suit  the  individual  adaptations  that  you  will 
develop. 

And  now,  having  repeatedly  referred  to  the 
existence  of  something  that  we  have  called 
our  "intellectual  digestion,"  let  us  take  a 
closer  look  at  this  function  of  our  mind  and 
examine  its  relation  to  our  reading. 


CHAPTER  VII 

INTELLECTUAL    DIGESTION 

I 

Some  wise  wag,  hiding  a  parable  in  a  parody, 
has  said  that  "to  eat  is  human;  to  digest, 
divine."    And  when  we  come  to  think  about 
it,  we  realize  that    it    is   exactly  here  —  at 
the  point  indicated  by  the  semicolon  in  this 
wag's    sentence  —  that  we    are    accustomed 
(as  though  at  some  boundary  posting-station 
where  burdens  are  shifted  to  other  horses  and 
entrusted  to  new  guides)  to  hand  over  our  re- 
sponsibilities, quite  casually  and  confidently, 
to  the  Unknown  Mystery.  Three  times  a  day, 
as  self-willed  and  selective  human  choosers, 
we  "  start  something."  And  three  times  a  day, 
unless  something  goes  wrong  with  the  mysteri- 
ous machinery,  we  experience,  with  supreme 
content  but  with  no  other  concern,  the  result- 
ant miracle  of  transubstantiation. 

And  it  is  just  the  same  with  our  minds. 

No  matter  how  proud  of — I  had  almost 
said  how  "stuck  on"  —  our  thinking,  and  our 

192 


INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION 

reasoning  pozvers,  and  our  deductive  faculties 
we  may  be,  it  requires  very  little  self-knowl- 
edge to  realize  that  these  more  or  less  con- 
scious and  mechanical  forms  of  mental  exer- 
cise are  but  the  chewing  oj  our  mental  food. 
The  ultimate  miracle  of  transubstantiation  — - 
the  involuntary  processes  of  disintegration 
and  transforming,  of  selection  and  rejection, 
of  absorption  and  assimilation,  by  which  the 
essentials  of  ideas  and  the  outcomes  of  under- 
standings are  finally  incorporated  in  our  per- 
sonalities —  all  this  takes  place  on  the  further 
side  of  another  (or  is  it  the  same?)  semicolon. 
No  less  in  our  reading  than  in  our  eating, 
there  is  a  point  at  which,  quite  casually  and 
confidently,  we  entrust  all  further  responsibil- 
ity to  the  Unknown  Mystery  within  us.  In 
short,  if  you  happen  to  prefer  the  statement, 
there  is  a  chemistry  of  the  brain  as  well  as  of 
the  body,  whose  fundamental  mystery  eludes 
us,  but  whose  workings  we  may  none  the  less 
study,  and  in  the  attainments  of  whose  ends 
it  is  thus  possible  for  us  to  cooperate. 

And  it  is  the  purpose  of  this  chapter  (i)  to 
examine,  in  the  light  of  our  everyday  experi- 
ence, the  more  obvious  workings  of  this  men- 

193 


HOW  TO  READ 

tal  chemistry;  (2)  to  point  out  a  misconcep- 
tion that  we  constantly  labor  under  in  our 
reading  for  want  of  this  simple  facing  of  fact; 
and  (3)  to  indicate  the  practical  relevancy  of 
these  matters  to  the  further  developing  of  the 
reading-methods  we  are  discussing. 

11 

Before,  however,  we  go  into  the  laboratory 
and  prepare  the  simple  experiment  needed  to 
demonstrate  the  actual  character  of  the  re- 
actions we  are  wanting  to  understand,  it  will 
be  just  as  well  to  note  a  few  general  facts  with 
regard  to  our  habitual  actions  and  attitude  in 
the  matter  under  discussion.  For  we  are  con- 
stantly taking  the  real  state  of  things  into  ac- 
count, while  failing  specifically  to  recognize 
their  character. 

Thus  we  frequently  say  to  each  other,  "  Yes, 
I'm  inclined  to  agree  with  you.  But  suppose 
we  sleep  on  it."  We  even  have  a  proverb  that 
says,  "The  night  brings  counsel."  And  noth- 
ing is  more  common  than  for  a  person  who  has 
masticated  an  idea  for  an  hour  and  then,  so  to 
say,  swallowed  it  and  forgotten  it,  to  be  re- 
minded of  it  the  next  day,  or  the  next  week, 

194 


INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION 

and,  finding  its  appearance  subtly  altered  and 
his  attitude  correspondingly  changed  toward 
it,  to  say,  "No,  I've  been  thinking  that  over, 
and  I've  changed  my  mind." 

Of  course  the  psychologists  hasten  to  sup- 
ply us  with  highly  interesting  and,  inciden- 
tally, conflicting  theories  about  involuntary 
cerebration  and  the  continuous  activity  of  the 
subliminal  consciousness.  But  for  our  present 
purpose  it  does  n't  make  a  bit  of  difference 
what  you  call  it.  The  fact  remains  that,  in- 
tellectually speaking,  we  are  ruminating  ani- 
mals. The  man  just  quoted  had  not,  in  any 
ordinary  sense;  been  "thinking  it  over."  He 
had,  quite  involuntarily  and  without  any  con- 
trol either  of  the  process  or  the  result,  been 
digesting  the  idea.  His  subsequent,  conscious 
consideration  of  the  result  was  to  all  intents 
and  purposes  a  "chewing  of  his  cud." 

in 

Our  first  concern,  then,  is  to  see  whether 
we  cannot  manage  to  surprise  our  minds  in 
the  actual  act,  while  reading,  of  carrying  out 
some  of  the  coarser  and  less  intricate  transfor- 
mations of  its  chemic  action  —  just  as,  with  a 

195 


HOW  TO  READ 

couple  of  glass  tubes  and  a  bunsen  burner,  a 
chemist  will  enable  us  to  see  Nature  at  her 
more  obvious  tricks  of  prestidigitation. 

And  by  way  of  preparing  the  laboratory  for 
our  experiment,  I  am  going  to  ask  you  to  re- 
member, all  over  again,  that  the  printed  mat- 
ter before  your  eyes  —  whether  it  be  on  a 
signboard,  or  on  the  front  sheet  of  the  morn- 
ing paper,  or  on  a  page  of  an  exciting  novel,  or 
in  the  paragraph  that  you  are  now  reading 
—  is  never  a  thing  in  itself,  but  is  always 
merely  printed  instructions,  like  sheet  music. 

Somehow  or  other  we  do  not  seem  to  get 
mixed  up  about  the  nature  of  sheet  music. 

Even  musicians,  who  "read  music"  as 
fluently  as  you  and  I  read  print,  do  not  seem, 
often,  to  get  mixed  up  about  it. 

Practically  every  one  recognizes  sheet  music 
for  what  it  actually  is;  namely,  printed  in- 
structions as  to  what  to  do  with  a  tin  whistle, 
or  a  flute,  or  a  violin  and  a  piano,  or  a  quartette 
of  stringed  instruments,  or  a  full  orchestra 
with  its  choirs  of  strings  and  brasses  and  wood- 
winds and  instruments  of  percussion,  in  order 
to  make  music. 

But,  somehow,  it  is  different  with  reading 

196 


INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION 

matter.   About  the  nature  and  the  purpose  of 
that  we  are  constantly  getting  mixed. 

Suppose,  then,  that  we  begin  by  putting 
down  the  facts. 

(i)  Reading  matter,  like  sheet  music,  is 
just  printed  instructions. 

(2)  It  may  be  merely  instructions  as  to 
what  to  do  with  a  set  of  muscles  and  with  a 
pair  of  eyes  and  a  pair  of  ears;  as  in  the  rail- 
way-crossing sign,  stop!  look!  listen! 

Or  (3)  it  may  be  trite  instructions  (like  a 
tin-whistle  tune)  for  stringing  a  few  thread- 
bare memories  together  so  as  to  form  a  mental 
image  of  a  "statement  of  fact";  as  (I  quote 
from  this  morning's  paper)  "The  bride  was 
gowned  in  white  satin  and  wore  a  tulle  veil 
caught  back  with  orange  blossoms." 

Or  (4)  it  may  (as  in  H.  G.  Wells's  novel, 
"The  Research  Magnificent")  be  instruc- 
tions as  to  what  to  do  with  the  full  orchestra 
of  one's  personal  attainment,  with  all  its  bal- 
anced choirs  of  physical,  emotional,  mental, 
and  spiritual  experience  and  responsiveness, 
in  order  to  make,  inside  one's  self,  a  sym- 
phonic, soul-stirring  vision  of  the  finenesses  of 
human  failure. 

197 


HOW  TO   READ 

But  we  are  constantly  forgetting  this. 

We  are  constantly  settling  down  into  the 
lazy  assumption  that  the  text  of  a  story  is 
the  story  itself;  that  the  words  of  a  poem  are 
the  poetry  itself;  and  forgetting  that  they  are 
only  instructions  as  to  what  to  do  with  our 
memories  and  our  imaginations,  our  reason 
and  our  understanding,  in  order  to  create  in- 
side ourselves  the  story  or  the  poem. 

And  the  fact  of  which,  at  the  present  mo- 
ment, we  need  to  remind  ourselves  is  that, 
given  a  page  or  a  volume  of  these  instructions, 
the  rest  is  "up  to  us";  just  exactly  as  in  the 
case  of  a  musician  with  an  instrument  in  his 
hand,  or  of  a  conductor  with  an  orchestra  un- 
der his  baton,  when  one  or  other  of  them  opens 
a  volume  of  sheet  music. 

IV 

We  all  recognize  that  the  sheet-music 
method  of  conveying  instructions  is  a  make- 
shift. 

Even  the  layman  knows  it  for  a  system  of 
signs,  effective  on  the  whole,  but  nevertheless 
clumsy.  Even  the  outsider  understands  that 
this  system  of  signs  is  amazingly  definite  as  to 

198 


INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION 

main  issues,  but  is  often  hazy  and  sometimes 
wholly  inarticulate  as  to  subtleties  —  that  it 
leaves  (not  from  choice,  but  from  necessity) 
many  niceties  of  interpretation  to  the  intelli- 
gence and  the  personal  decision  of  the  per- 
former. 

But  we  fail  as  a  rule  to  see  that  the  same 
thing,  only  more  so,  is  true  of  our  word-sys- 
tem of  conveying  instructions.  Composers 
and  performers  alike,  we  are  in  the  habit  of 
assuming  that  our  word-system,  and  especially 
our  printed-word-system,  not  only  equals  the 
other  in  the  definiteness  of  its  main  instruc- 
tions, but  is  capable  of  being  made  almost  free 
from  minor  haziness. 

Yet  the  facts  are  quite  the  other  way  about. 

The  instructions  of  reading  matter  have, 
when  carefully  examined,  scarcely  any  abso- 
lute definiteness  to  them  at  all. 

They  leave  (and  again  not  from  choice  but 
from  necessity)  not  merely  the  niceties  of  in- 
terpretation, but  the  first-hand  material  of  the 
composition  itself,  to  the  more  or  less  invol- 
untary selection  of  the  performer. 

Of  course  as  an  idea  —  as  an  intellectual 
realization  —  this  fact  has  now  become  fa- 

199 


HOW  TO  READ 

miliar  to  us.  We  have  repeatedly  proved  it  to 
our  own  satisfaction  and  to  our  consequent 
acceptation  in  the  earlier  stages  of  our  in- 
quiry. But  our  present  experiment  requires 
something  more  than  this  theoretical  convic- 
tion. And  I  am  therefore  going  to  contrive 
that  you  shall,  in  imagination  at  least,  see  the 
thing  in  operation  with  your  own  eyes. 

v 

The  box  adjoining  that  of  the  party  I  was 
with  at  a  recent  Kneisel  concert  was  occupied 
by  two  well-known  musicians.  And  I  noticed 
with  some  curiosity  that  during  the  perform- 
ance of  a  Haydn  quartette  these  two  were 
sitting  well  forward  in  their  seats,  with  a  copy 
of  the  score  held  open  on  their  knees,  and  were 
watching  with  the  most  intent  interest  the 
way  in  which  the  experts  on  the  stage  were 
following  the  instructions  of  the  composer. 
Of  course  if  the  piece  being  played  had  been 
a  new  one,  if,  say,  it  had  been  one  of  Schoen- 
berg's  intricate  and  radical  challenges  of  har- 
monic convention,  this  study  of  the  score  on 
the  part  of  these  specialists  would  not  have 
attracted   my   attention.     But  the   selection 

200 


INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION 

being  rendered  was  one  of  the  loveliest  of 
Havdn's  well-known  works,  and  the  men  I 
was  watching  must  have  been  familiar  with 
it  for  years.  And  they  were  not  only  listening 
with  all  their  ears  to  the  music,  but  were  fol- 
lowing the  printed  instructions  closely  and  ex- 
changing from  time  to  time  quick  glances  of 
silent  comment  and  appreciation. 

Now  it  is  quite  evident  that  they  were  not 
watching  to  see  whether  the  performers  struck 
the  right  notes.  The  definiteness  of  the  instruc- 
tions on  the  one  hand,  and  the  well-known 
skill  of  the  performers  on  the  other,  made 
that  a  foregone  conclusion.  It  was,  as  we  can 
see,  the  subtleties  of  this  famous  quartette's 
individual  interpretation  that  they  were 
studying. 

But  suppose  that  two  of  you  were  similarly 
to  sit,  with  the  pages  of  Kipling's  'The 
Brushwood  Boy"  open  between  you;  aiid 
suppose  that  it  were  possible  — -  by  some 
miracle  of  mind-reading  —  for  you  similarly 
to  watch  (and  to  exchange  glances  about)  the 
way  in  which  I  followed  the  author's  instruc- 
tions as  I  read  that  story  to  myself. 

Do  you  not  see   that    here  would  be  far 

20 1 


HOW  TO  READ 

deeper  differences  than  any  of  attack  and  of 
accent,  of  execution  and  inflection,  of  tempo 
and  of  temperament?  Do  you  not  see  that,  so 
far  from  my  "striking  the  right  notes"  being 
a  matter  to  be  taken  for  granted,  the  very 
materials  I  worked  with  would  be  either  for- 
eign to  you  or  non-existent?  That  the  memo- 
ries I  assembled  into  scenes,  and  the  features 
I  built  faces  out  of,  would  be  unknown  to  you; 
and  that  the  combinations  I  made  of  them 
would  seem  incongruous  and  inappropriate, 
since  you  would  lack  the  associations  that  I 
unconsciously  chose  them  for? 

Do  you  not  see  that  my  landscape  of  Kip- 
ling's "Dream  Country"  would  be  alien  to 
you,  and  that  my  cast  of  his  chief  characters 
—  the  potential  my  selves  with  which  I  peopled 
that  mystic  land  —  would  be  unrecognizable? 
Nay,  more:  do  you  not  see  that  to  no  single 
important  word  in  the  entire  text  would  I 
give  your  personal  meaning;  and  that  the 
words  ihatzvere  important  to  me  —  the  words 
whose  grouped  meanings  every  now  and  then 
combined  to  "make  things  happen  in  me"  — ■ 
would  often  be  words  that  you  scarcely  noticed? 


202 


INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION 

VI 

Of  course  you  see  all  this.  But  then  all  this 
is  merely  an  imaginative  dramatization  of 
what  we  have  already  discovered  and  dis- 
cussed. And  I  have  contrived  this  dramatized 
presentation  of  the  actual  workings  of  a  read- 
er's mind,  not  primarily  for  its  own  sake,  but 
as  a  demonstrator  in  chemistry  will  dispose 
the  paraphernalia  and  contrive  the  operative 
conditions  of  an  experiment  in  order  that, 
when  the  preliminary  steps  have  been  taken, 
the  ingredients  mixed,  the  lamp  lighted,  and 
the  reaction  intended  to  be  observed  is  about 
to  take  place,  he  may  invite  the  onlookers  to 
approach  the  table  and  keep  a  closer  watch. 
And  it  is  this  final  and  closer  look  that  I  now 
ask  you  to  take  at  my  supposed  reading  of 
"The  Brushwood  Boy." 

Do  you  not  see  that  when  my  readings  of 
certain  groups  of  words  "made  things  happen 
in  me,"  these  happenings  would  at  times  con- 
sist of  the  minglings  (like  those  of  raindrops 
on  a  window  pane)  of  bits  of  old  feeling  into 
spurts  of  new  emotion?  And  do  you  not  see 
that  at  other  times  these  "  happenings  "  would 

203 


HOW  TO   READ 

be  subtler  still;  would  consist  of  almost  chem- 
ical combinings  of  separate  atoms  of  familiar 
understanding  into  the  beginnings  of  new  per- 
ceptions? And  do  you  not,  finally,  see  that 
these  occurrences  would  be  utterly  personal  to 
me,  and  that,  since  they  would  quite  literally 
result  in  new  growths  of  my  personality,  they 
would  also  be  of  supreme  importance  to  me? 

VII 

But  our  object  in  examining  a  bit  into  the 
workings  of  these  subtleties  is  by  no  means  a 
desire  to  supervise  or  control  their  operation. 
The  mere  attempt  to  do  this  would  instantly 
defeat  its  own  end  by  stopping  the  machinery. 
Our  object  is  to  enable  us,  by  understanding 
the  sources  of  our  reactions  to  reading,  to  ac- 
quire little  by  little  a  better  criterion  of  values 
as  to  their  output  and  to  help  us  in  gradually 
building  up  that  attitude  toward  all  reading 
that  is  to  be  the  final  object  of  our  search. 

In  the  last  chapter  we  examined  the  more 
or  less  concrete,  conscious,  and  voluntary 
seekings-out  of  relationships  from  which  the 
rewards  of  reading  (be  these  restful  diversion, 
pleasurable  stimulation,  or  utilitarian  "  knowl- 

204 


INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION 

edge")  are  most  immediately  derived.  And 
here  we  have  managed  for  a  moment  to 
glimpse  something  of  the  manifold,  minute, 
unconscious,  and  involuntary  play  of  similar 
relationship-establishing  that  goes  on,  in  the 
very  act  of  reading,  beneath  the  level  of  our 
ordinary  attention  and  notice.  And  having 
once  recognized  the  existence  and  glimpsed 
the  nature  of  this  unconscious  mental  activity, 
we  can  understand  how,  on  the  one  hand, 
these  quick-forming  nuclei  of  emotion  and 
perception  rise,  now  and  then,  into  conscious 
recognition  (like  the  tips  of  coral  reefs  above 
the  sea  surface);  and  how,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  must  be  through  some  slow,  chemic-like 
continuance  of  the  same  activities  that  our 
"second  thoughts,"  our  "having-slept-on-it" 
judgments,  and  all  the  constructive  results  of 
our  unconscious  "digestion"  of  ideas  and 
proposals  are  derived. 

But  our  still  more  immediate  object  in  ex- 
amining into  our  subconscious  reactions  to 
reading  is  the  recognizing  and  getting  rid  of  a 
misconception  that  we  are  all  prone  to  enter- 
tain; namely,  the  notion  that  it  is  the  amount 
that  we  read,  and  more  especially  yet  the  sun* 

205 


HOW  TO  READ 

of  what  we  remember  out  of  what  we  read,  that 
really  matters. 

It  is  n't. 

What  really  counts  is  the  sum  of  what  hap- 
pens in  us  through  reading — the  ultimate 
outcome  of  those  "concrete"  combinings  and 
"chemical"  transformations  by  which  new 
tissues  are  added  to  our  intelligence  and  new 
cells  to  our  understanding.  What  counts  is 
not  the  quantity  of  our  intellectual  food,  but 
the  products  of  our  intellectual  digestion. 

VIII 

I  know  a  man  —  he  is  a  contemporary  and 
was  once  a  classmate  of  my  own  —  who  has 
pushed  this  misconception  to  greater  lengths 
than  any  one  I  know.  Indeed,  his  mind  is  less 
like  a  digestive  apparatus  and  more  like  a 
cold-storage  warehouse  than  anything  human 
I  have  ever  encountered.  For  some  decades 
now  his  mental  floor-space  has  been  practi- 
cally filled,  so  that  he  no  longer  adds  anything 
bulky  to  his  stores.  But  little  that  has  gone 
into  his  warehouse  has  been  lost;  and  nothing 
that  has  stayed  in  it  has  ever  spoiled. 

I  have  watched  him  for  years  —  watched 

206 


INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION 

him  with  curiosity  and  amazement  —  watched 
him  take  out  from  those  icily  preservative 
depths  and  lay  down,  as  it  were  on  the  counter 
of  his  conversation,  supposedly  perishable  in- 
tellectual provender:  —  the  plots  of  long- 
forgotten  novels,  the  middle  names  of  now 
deceased  acquaintances,  the  outlines  of  old 
after-dinner  arguments,  the  carcasses  of  ex- 
tinct theories,  bunches  of  biographical  dates, 
crates  of  infertile  facts,  historical  happenings, 
chemical  formulae,  literary  quotations,  —  an 
endless  variety,  in  short,  of  mental  food  that 
should  have  been  consumed  and  digested 
years  ago  when  it  was  fresh  and  in  season,  but 
which  he  has  preserved,  staling  but  intact,  for 
a  generation. 

Yet  while  some  of  these  articles  come  out 
a  trifle  shriveled,  —  a  little  sicklied  o'er  with 
the  cold-storage  hue,  —  no  one  of  them  ever 
shows  the  slightest  sign  of  having  been  at- 
tacked by  the  digestive  juices  of  my  friend's 
mentality.  And  never  —  certainly  never  in 
the  last  twenty  years  or  so  —  have  I  seen  any 
reason  to  suspect  that,  by  the  normal  proc- 
esses of  intellectual  digestion  and  assimila- 
tion, he  has  added  a  single  cell  to  his  respon- 

207 


HOW  TO  READ 

siveness  to  life  or  revivified  by  a  single  red 
corpuscle  the  circulation  of  his  outlook  on  the 
world. 

And  yet,  in  certain  lines,  and  in  the  ordinary 
acceptation  of  the  term,  he  is  "  a  great  reader." 

He  is  also,  for  our  present  purpose,  a  most 
useful  specimen  of  a  horrible  example.  For 
nothing  ever  happens  in  him  when  he  reads. 
Nothing,  that  is,  except  the  occasional  storing 
away,  in  some  still  vacant  cranny  in  his  re- 
frigerated memory,  of  one  more  frozen  fact 
or  dead  idea. 

IX 

You  will  not  —  or  I  trust  that  you  will  not 
—  imagine  for  a  moment  that  I  am  impugning 
the  value  of  a  good  memory.  I  am  merely 
calling  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  storing 
of  one's  memory  through  reading  is  (or  should 
be)  a  means  to  an  end  and  not  an  end  in  itself. 
It  is  like  the  outfitting  and  provisioning  of  the 
ship  of  our  adventure.  Everything  that  goes 
into  it  that  we  can  use  later  on  is  of  value. 
Anything  that,  in  the  final  test,  we  neither  put 
to  practical  living  use,  or  take  out,  like  tinned 
food,  and  intellectually  digest  and  live  by,  is  a 

208 


INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION 

waste  of  storage-room  and  a  dead  burden  of 
superfluous  cargo. 

The  man  we  are  talking  about  has  a  most 
remarkable  memory.  He  has  (to  change  the 
simile)  coddled  it  and  pampered  it  and  "sac- 
rificed himself"  in  order  to  "give  it  every  ad- 
vantage," exactly  like  a  doting  mother  with 
an  only  child.  And  the  result  is  very  similar. 
This  "only  child"  of  his  always  wants,  when 
there  is  company,  to  monopolize  the  talk.  It 
is  as  bad  as  a  pet  parrot.  It  fills  in  every 
pause  with  statements  of  irrelevant  fact  or  of- 
ferings of  superfluous  information.  Yet  even 
so,  we  must  not  do  my  friend  an  injustice. 
His  memory  has  a  value  both  to  himself  and 
to  those  who  know  him.  To  himself  I  imagine 
it  is  like  a  miser's  strong  box.  When  he  is  not 
engaged  in  adding  to  its  contents,  he  takes 
out  its  unproductive  treasures  and  hugs  him- 
self in  the  joy  of  counting  them.  And  to  his 
acquaintances  his  memory  is  like  a  special  sup- 
plement to  the  encyclopaedia.  One  can  often 
turn  to  it  for  information  that  one  does  not 
bother  to  carry  round. 


209 


HOW  TO  READ 


x 

There  is,  by  the  way,  a  question  that  it  has 
been  his  habit  to  ask  me,  once  a  year  or  so,  for 
a  long  time.  He  asks  it  unexpectedly  —  ap- 
parently when  he  thinks  me  off  my  guard  or 
in  an  "easy"  mood,  and  thus  liable  to  be  sur- 
prised into  divulging  a  professional  secret. 

"John,"  he  asks  me,  "how  do  you  ever 
manage  to  remember  all  you  read?': 

Now  it  is,  of  course,  useless  to  attempt  a 
direct  answer  to  such  a  question  from  such  a 
man.  You  might  explain  to  him  for  an  hour; 
but  instead  of  trying  to  understand  what  you 
meant,  he  would  be  trying  to  remember  what 
you  said.  So  I  take  refuge  in  the  Socratic 
method.    I  ask  him  a  question  myself. 

"George,"  I  say,  "you  eat  three  meals  a  day 
all  the  year  round.  How  do  you  manage  to 
hold  all  you  eat?" 

But  he  fails  to  get  it. 

I  can  see  by  the  expression  of  his  eyes  — • 
those  windows  to  his  warehouse  —  that  he 
simply  thinks  that  I  have  once  more  proved 
too  alert  to  be  caught  napping  and  have  once 
more  guarded  the  secret  that  he  so  wants  me 

2IO 


INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION 

to  share  with  him.  For  he  has  noticed  that  I 
have  "ideas"  in  stock  that  he  has,  somehow, 
failed  to  pick  up.  And  he  naturally  assumes 
that,  since  I  have  them,  I  must  somewhere 
have  read  them  and  remembered  them.  How 
else,  on  the  cold-storage  basis  of  accumulat- 
ing mental  capital,  can  they  have  gotten  into 
my  refrigerator?  What  he  is  really  asking  for 
is  my  ammonia  formula  for  preserving  an 
even  mental  temperature  of  360  Fahrenheit. 
And  some  day,  on  his  tombstone,  we  shall  find 
engraved,  "Lord,  keep  my  memory  cold." 

XI 

Let  us  each,  at  this  point,  do  what  George 
apparently  never  does,  and  ask  ourselves  a 
question.  And  let  us  each,  before  we  go  on 
with  our  discussion,  try  just  for  a  second  or 
two  to  find  an  honest  answer.  Here  is  the 
question:  — 

"  What  did  I  have  for  dinner  on  the  tenth  of 
last  April  ?  " 

Doubtless  we  have  all  forgotten. 

Yet  the  mere  effort  to  remember  has  set 
blood  to  flooding  the  arterial  filaments  in  our 
brains.  And  it  is  quite  likely  that  in  this  very 

211 


HOW  TO  READ 

blood  (which  has  just  failed  to  stir  into  action 
the  memory  cells  charged  with  the  details  cf 
that  menu)  there  has  flowed  some  transmuted 
essence  of  that  unremembered  meal. 

And  it  is  no  otherwise  with  reading. 

Two  months  from  now  you  may  remember, 
or  you  may  have  forgotten,  the  verbal  exposi- 
tions of  this  chapter.  But,  assimilated  and 
built  into  the  living  tissues  of  your  intelligence, 
transubstantiated  and  incorporated  in  the 
very  thoughts  you  will  be  thinking  with,  there 
will  be  (if  any  thing  at  all  "  happens  in  you  "  as 
you  read  it,  and  if  anything  digestively  hap- 
pens in  you  afterward)  the  essence  of  what 
you  have  extracted  from  this  intellectual  meal. 

XII 

And  now  we  come  to  the  practical  point,  — 
the  point  that  may,  as  yet,  seem  very  blind 
and  unlikely  to  be  practical,  —  namely,  the 
relevancy  of  all  this  to  our  actual  reading. 

For  our  memories,  as  we  know,  are  appar- 
ently arbitrary,  self-willed,  and  inconsistent. 
They  are  given  to  retaining,  unasked,  a  host 
of  things  that  we  think  we  have  no  interest  in 
or  use  for;  while  mislaying,  or  losing,  things 

212 


INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION 

that  we  have  begged  them  in  vain  to  keep  for 
us.  Indeed,  the  best  of  them  sometimes  act 
like  pockets  with  holes  in  them  —  letting 
five-dollar  pocket-knives  drop  out,  but  retain- 
ing the  crumpled  seat-coupons  of  a  vaudeville 
show.  Yet  in  spite  of  this  I  would  seem  to  be 
urging  you  to  give  over  the  training  of  your 
memories  and  to  be  counseling,  instead,  the 
centering  of  your  attention  upon  minute  mat- 
ters of  mental  activity  which,  in  the  long  run, 
take  care  of  themselves. 

But  this  is  very  far,  indeed,  from  being  the 
case. 

Let  us  examine  for  a  moment  the  real  work- 
ings of  our  memories. 

XIII 

Modern  science  is  inclined  to  believe  that 
those  brain  cells  with  which  the  function  of 
memory  is  connected  retain  a  record  of  every 
incident  of  our  lives;  that,  physiologically 
speaking,  we  never  forget  anything,  no  matter 
how  often,  mentally  speaking,  we  fail  to  re- 
member: in  short  that  "remembering"  is 
merely  the  successful  sending-through,  to  the 
latent  cells  where  the  records  are  stored,  of  the 

213 


HOW  TO  READ 

stimulating  impulses  needed  to  arouse  them. 
Thus  our  memories  are  like  some  micro-cos- 
mic telephone  system  in  which,  the  oftener 
we  make  a  call,  the  more  used  do  the  opera- 
tors become  in  "getting  the  connection"  for 
us.  And  the  specialists  assure  us,  moreover, 
that  these  paths  of  connection  — the  routings 
through  local  exchanges  by  which  our  calls  are 
sent —  are  association  paths ;  which  (translated 
into  the  terms  of  our  present  inquiry)  means 
paths  of  somehow  recognized  relationships. 

Of  course  these  "recognized  relationships" 
may  be  either  warranted  in  fact  or  altogether 
arbitrary.  And  the  quack  mind-doctors,  who 
undertake  to  train  our  memories  by  corre- 
spondence, are  very  fond  of  prescribing  these 
arbitrarily  established  relationships  as  aids  to 
memorizing.  Thus,  they  will  advise  you,  if 
you  happen  to  be  a  follower  of  Izaak  Walton 
and  to  have  a  second  cousin  living  in  a  town 
on  the  Hudson  that  you  can  never  recall  the 
name  of,  to  fix  the  town  in  your  memory  by 
the  fact  that  your  second  cousin's  wife's  sister 
has  a  "fishy"  eye  and  that  Fishkill  ought  to 
be  a  good  place  to  catch  trout.  However,  we 
have  progressed  far  enough  in  our  study  of  the 

214 


INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION 

value  to  us  in  our  reading  of  the  other  kind 
of  recognized  relationships,  to  dismiss  these 
pompous  winnowers  of  mental  chaff  with  a 
good-natured  laugh. 

Nor,  for  our  immediate  purpose,  is  it  nec- 
essary for  us  to  go  any  deeper  into  the  fascina- 
ting but  complex  subj ect  of  memory.  We  need, 
now,  only  to  remind  ourselves  of  a  fact  of 
which  our  experience  furnishes  us  constant 
proof. 

XIV 

We  know,  for  instance,  that  if  we  happen 
to  meet  an  acquaintance  on  the  street  and  to 
stop  for  a  moment's  inconsequential  chat 
with  him,  the  chances  are  that  in  a  week  we 
shall  have  forgotten  all  that  was  said;  and 
that  in  six  months  the  incident  itself  may 
easily  have  slipped  our  minds.  But  suppose 
that  the  next  morning  another  acquaintance 
stops  us  and  says,  "Tough  about  Judson's 
shooting  himself!"  —  Judson  being  the  man 
we'd  talked  to  the  day  before.  That  puts  a 
new  face  on  the  matter;  and  we  will  then  re- 
member for  good  and  all  that  Judson,  a  few 
hours  before  he  pulled  the  trigger,  said  to  us 

215 


HOW  TO   READ 

with  a  queer  sort  of  casualness  that  this  was 
"a  bum  world  anyway"  and  that  "we  would 
probably  be  quite  as  well  out  of  it  as  in  it." 

Yes,  this  is  another  "extreme  case."  But  I 
have  chosen  it  that  way  on  purpose;  just  as 
one  makes  a  photographic  enlargement  of  a 
bit  of  handwriting  in  order  to  examine  it.  Its 
extremeness  enables  us  to  see  instantly  that 
we  should  remember  the  character  of  our 
talk  with  Judson  because  our  attention  was  re- 
directed to  it  promptly  and  because  we  then 
discovered  a  recognized  relationship  in  it. 

And,  having  seen  this,  we  can  also  see  that 
if  the  complete  records  were  open  to  us,  we 
should  no  doubt  find  that  these  two  factors 
had,  in  some  fortuitous  and  forgotten  way, 
been  actively  responsible  for  even  those  re- 
memberings, so  often  apparently  haphazard 
and  senseless,  that  persist  in  us  from  the  days 
of  childhood. 

xv 

And  so,  by  another  and  more  roundabout 
route,  but  in  possession  now  of  still  other  un- 
derstandings and  of  newly  acquired  senses  of 
relationship,  we  come  back  to  the  further  con- 

216 


INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION 

sideration  of  those  practical  reasons,  dealt 
with  in  the  last  chapter,  for  valuing  and  in- 
dulging (by  slight  exercises  of  deliberate  will 
power  when  necessary)  the  lesser  impulses 
of  curiosity  and  the  minor  upwellings  of  in- 
terest that  come  to  us  during  reading  and 
after  reading. 

Let  us  sum  up  our  discoveries:  — 
(i)  We  know  now  what  these  lesser  curiosi- 
ties and  these  passing  impulses  of  interest  that 
intrude  for  a  moment  on  our  engrossment  in 
"the  story"  really  are.  They  are  the  con- 
structive and  digestive  activities  of  our  un- 
conscious minds  rising  into  consciousness. 
They  are  the  top  layer  of  what  is  happening  in 
us  as  we  read. 

(2)  We  know,  too,  that  if  we  habitually  and 
impatiently  brush  these  incidents  aside  and 
hurry  on,  the  chances  of  our  "forgetting" 
them  gradually  increase  toward  certainty. 
Whereas  even  a  moment's  turning  of  atten- 
tion to  them,  and  a  passing  noting  of  their  re- 
lationship to  our  present  enjoyment,  or  to  our 
past  prejudices,  or  to  our  other  reactions  to 
what  we  are  reading,  tends  to  give  them  a  num- 
ber in  our  mental  'phone  book. 

217 


HOW  TO  READ 

(3)  We  know  now,  moreover,  that  "what 
happens  in  us"  through  reading  does  n't  all 
happen  while  we  read.  It  only  begins  to  hap- 
pen then.  Our  intellectual  digestion  goes  on 
working  on  a  book  for  days  and  wTeeks;  and 
periodically,  during  this  process,  we  experi- 
ence other  impulses  of  curiosity  toward  it  and 
other  upwellings  of  interest  with  regard  to  it 
—  urgings,  no  less,  from  that  "ruminating 
animal,"  our  intelligence,  to  help  along  in  the 
process  of  assimilation  by  chewing  the  cud  of 
its  progressive  reflections  for  it. 

(4)  And  we  know  now,  too,  that  as  far  as 
"remembering  what  we  read"  goes,  since 
memory  is  a  matter  of  retracing  paths  of  es- 
tablished relationship,  our  memories  will,  in 
the  long  run,  take  care  of  themselves  if  we  take 
care  of  establishing  the  relationships. 

(5)  And  so  we  arrive  at  our  practical  realiza- 
tion of  the  relevancy  of  these  minute  matters 
to  our  reading. 

For  even  when  reading  is  for  us  only  a  care- 
less pleasing  of  our  mental  palates,  the  fugi- 
tive pleasure  we  derive  from  it  is  due  to  the 
unrecognized  and  quickly  forgotten  play  of 
the  coarser  of  these  reactions. 

218 


INTELLECTUAL  DIGESTION 

And  it  is  only  by  the  selective  indulgence 
of  our  natural  impulses  toward  noting  the 
finer  of  these  spontaneous  reactions,  and 
through  gradually,  by  noting  them,  establish- 
ing familiar  paths  of  relationship  among  them 
that  all  the  progressive  pleasures,  the  increas- 
ing stimulation,  the  accumulating  capital,  and 
the  final  enhancements  and  enfranchisements 
of  right  reading  are  to  be  sought  and,  in  our 
respectively  possible  degrees,  attained. 

xvi 

In  addition,  therefore,  to  the  advisory  rules 
laid  down  in  the  last  chapter  for  those  wish- 
ing, for  whatsoever  purpose,  to  increase  their 
reading  efficiency,  we  now  need  to  emphasize 
the  need  of  applying  these  same  rules  during 
the  subsequent  period  of  intellectual  digestion. 

Do  not  make  the  "  thinking  over  "  of  a  book 
a  matter  of  "duty."  Do  not  keep  "taking 
your  mental  temperature"  about  it  or  "pok- 
ing yourself  to  see  if  you  are  alive"  with  re- 
gard to  it. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  learn  to  value  your 
curiosity  about  books  after  reading  them. 
Learn  to  evaluate  your  minor  curiosities  in  re- 

219 


HOW  TO  READ 

gard  to  them  after  you  have  read  them.  Never 
fail  to  follow  out,  to  the  extent  of  your  aroused 
interest,  any  subsequent  promptings  of  in- 
quiry into  their  meaning  for  you,  or  into  your 
feelings  toward  them.  And,  other  things  being 
equal,  force  yourself  to  give  the  right  of  way 
to  curiosities  as  to  your  antagonisms  and  your 
dislikes,  rather  than  to  curiosities  as  to  your 
acquiescences  and  your  likings. 

And  now,  by  way  of  taking  up  some  of  the 
larger  questions  of  relationship-seeking  in- 
volved in  reading  whole  books,  —  questions 
that  have  purposely  been  deferred  till  we  had 
laid  a  foundation  for  their  consideration,  — 
let  us  take  up  the  matter  of  how  to  read  a 
novel. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

I 

Thus  far  we  have  dealt  almost  exclusively 
with  the  subjective  side  of  reading:  with  the 
internal  mechanisms  of  the  process;  with  the 
character  of  the  raw  materials  in  which  we 
work;  with  the  sources  from  which  we  draw 
these  materials;  with  the  urges,  largely  un- 
conscious, that  we  obey  in  building  up,  out  of 
these  materials,  our  versions  of  the  author's 
work;  with  the  limitations  imposed  upon  us, 
and  the  general  character  and  trend  of  the  op- 
portunities opened  out  to  us  by  the  fact  of  our 
having  to  read  under  these  generally  unreal- 
ized and  disregarded  conditions. 

And  we  have  perhaps  seemed,  in  conse- 
quence, to  be  assuming  that  authors  have  no 
rights  that  a  reader  is  bound  to  respect,  and 
that  the  normally  accepted  and  generally  read- 
for  objectivity  of  a  book's  contents  is  either 
non-existent  or  of  negligible  value. 

But  there  has  been  a  definite  purpose  in 

221 


HOW  TO  READ 

this  order  of  procedure.  For  whereas  there 
are  two  distinct  factors  in  right  reading,  and 
whereas  we  ordinarily  overestimate  the  im- 
portance of  one  of  these  factors  while  ignoring 
the  very  existence  of  the  other,  it  has  been 
necessary  to  restore  the  balance  by  a  compen- 
sating overemphasis.  And  we  have  attempted 
to  do  this  while  at  the  same  time  acquiring  a 
first-hand  and  vivid  realization  of  the  living 
actuality  and  the  finally  governing  character 
of  the  habitually  ignored  subjective  factor. 
Moreover,  this  is  the  logical  approach  to  a 
systemized  understanding  of  right  reading. 
For,  while  individual  readers  do  constantly 
arrive  at  an  intelligent  and  expert  practice  of 
right  reading  through  the  instinctive,  uncon- 
scious, and  unanalyzed  adapting  of  these  sub- 
jective means  to  the  complex  ends  involved, 
the  methods  of  these  individual  arrivals  are 
unsystemized  and  incommunicable.  And  not 
alone  the  best  routes  of  approach  to  right 
reading,  but  the  true  nature  of  its  rewards  and 
the  real  goals  toward  which  it  leads,  cannot  be 
made  systematically  clear  to  the  inquiring, 
would-be  practitioner  of  the  art  while  he  or 
she  continues  to  regard  the  author's  concep- 

222 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

tion  as  a  concrete  thing  actually  imprisoned 
in  the  text  and  identically  derivable  therefrom 
by  each  of  us. 

ii 

The  conception  of  the  author  is,  of  course, 
forever  un-get-at-able  except  in  approxima- 
tion by  any  of  us.  It  is  not  and  cannot  be 
"imprisoned  in  the  text."  It  exists,  and  can 
exist,  nowhere  in  the  world  except  in  the  au- 
thor's consciousness.  And  yet  this  conception 
of  the  author  is  for  us,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
more  nearly  an  objectively  sharable  entity 
than  our  inquiries  into  our  subjective  reading 
processes  have  thus  far  led  us  to  see. 

For  in  spite  of  the  variousness  (when 
closely  examined)  of  our  personal  experiences, 
temperamental  biases,  intellectual  predisposi- 
tions, and  complex  character  make-ups,  our 
type  resemblances  in  these  matters  are  (when 
viewed  from  a  little  distance)  more  noticeable 
than  our  individual  differences.  So  that  while 
no  two  of  us  ever  make  for  ourselves  identi- 
cal formulations  of  an  author's  conception, 
ow  individual  formulations  fall  inevitably 
into  type  classifications  —  into  groups  within 

223 


HOW  TO  READ 

which  the  general  agreements  outweigh  the 
specific  differences.  And  as  even  these  type 
differences,  and  even  racial  distinctions  and 
historical  alterations  of  outlook,  merge  at  last 
into  the  basic  solidarity  of  our  shared  human- 
ity, it  follows  that  in  something  very  like  a 
direct  proportion  to  the  universal  human  rele- 
vancy of  an  author's  conception  our  readings 
of  his  work  tend  to  a  consensus  of  practical 
agreement.  They  will,  let  us  say,  group  them- 
selves into  a  central  core  of  similar  formula- 
tions, surrounded  by  smaller  groups  of  aberrant 
type  readings,  and  fringe  out  into  individual 
freak  interpretations. 

Let  me  illustrate  this  statement  by  an  ex- 
ample. 

In  the  last  chapter  we  used  a  fancied  read- 
ing of  ''The  Brushwood  Boy"  as  a  means  of 
examining  the  extreme  individuality  of  our  per- 
sonal reading  processes.  Yet  thousands  upon 
thousands  of  English-speaking  readers,  in  spite 
of  their  thousands  of  individual  readings  of  the 
tale,  have  found  themselves  in  essential  agree- 
ment in  their  formulation  of  Kipling's  elusive 
conception  of  youth's  universal  longing.  And 
at  the  same  time  other,  although  fewer,  thou- 

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HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

sands  have  found  themselves  in  equally  es- 
sential agreement  over  their  various  impa- 
tient inabilities  to  "see  anything  in  it."  And 
a  woman  once  actually  and  seriously  declared 
to  me  that  she  thought  "The  Brushwood 
Boy"  the  "most  indecent  story  she  had  ever 
read." 

in 

We  have  now  arrived,  then,  at  a  point  where 
we  can  agree  to  define  right  reading  as  a  con- 
structive and  critical  attempt  to  formulate, 
each  one  for  himself,  the  thing  that  the  author  is 
trying  to  show  us  in  the  terms  of  those  subjec- 
tive processes  and  materials  that  we  have  dis- 
cussed in  the  preceding  chapters.  And  it  re- 
mains for  us  to  discuss  the  broader  practical 
problems  involved  in  our  "  adventure  of  learn- 
ing to  read"  when  right  reading  is  thus  re- 
garded. 

And  I  have  elected  to  discuss  these  broader 
problems  under  the  chapter  heading  of  "How 
to  Read  a  Novel,"  because,  while  every  kind 
of  right  reading  is  demanded  of  us  in  special- 
ized and  concentratcdly  developed  form  in 
some  other-than-fktion  kind  of  reading,  it  is 

225 


HOW  TO  READ 

in  fiction  especially  (and  more  and  more  so  as 
the  modern  novel  continues  to  claim  the  whole 
of  life  as  its  field  and  to  include  all  of  life's  at- 
tainments and  relationships  in  its  successive 
and  many-angled  "criticisms  of  life")  that  ail 
kinds  of  right  reading  are  demanded  of  us  in 
turn  and  in  constructive  and  critical  combina- 
tion. And,  moreover,  because  it  is  especially 
in  reading  fiction  that  we  are  given  to  mud- 
dling along  without  any  active  exercise  of 
right  reading  at  all  and  without,  therefore,  de- 
riving any  of  the  enhancements  that  should 
result  to  us. 

IV 

Let  us  begin  with  the  statement  that  the 
right  reading  of  a  novel  consists  in  a  construc- 
tive and  critical  formulation  for  ourselves,  in 
the  fullest  possible  terms  of  our  own  experi- 
ence, of  the  particular  fictional  conception  that 
the  author  is  trying  to  place  before  us.  And 
in  order  to  get  the  problems  involved  in  this 
task  intelligently  stated,  let  us  examine  our 
relations  to  fiction  and  to  fictional  conceptions. 

Children  and  young  people,  as  we  have  al- 
ready seen,  love  fiction  because  it  gives  form  to 

226 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

their  unformulated  experience;  because  it  sup- 
plies an  imaginative  concreteness  to  their  long- 
ing for  adventure;  because  it  makes  articulate 
their  unvoiced  dreams  of  personal  achieve- 
ment. They  instinctively  use  it,  in  other 
words,  even  when  taking  refuge  in  it  from 
their  immediate  griefs  and  boredom,  as  an  ap- 
proach to  wider  living.  And  we,  if  we  would 
have  it  continue  to  serve  us,  even  as  a  refuge, 
must  do  the  same. 

But.  we  are  no  longer  children.  We  are  no 
longer,  on  the  stream  of  youth's  development, 
being  carried  swiftly  forward  in  a  constantly 
altering  approach  to  life  and  having  our 
dreams  automatically  changed  for  us  in  con- 
sequence. We  have,  relatively  speaking,  ar- 
rived. Our  development,  to  put  it  more  ac- 
curately, has  slowed  down ;  so  that  our  dreams, 
more  and  more,  impinge  upon  reality;  and 
experience,  more  and  more,  intervenes  to  con- 
tradict and  correct  our  hopes.  And  our  rela- 
tion to  fiction,  even  as  a  refuge,  changes  ac- 
cordingly. 

If,  under  these  new  conditions,  we  gradually 
come  to  shrink  from  experience;  gradually  ac- 
cept life  as  a  treadmill;  gradually  close  our 

227 


HOW  TO  READ 

eyes  to  its  tangled  and  contradictory  implica- 
tions and  seek  to  take  refuge  from  its  new 
puzzles  in  the  unaltered  redreaming  of  old 
dreams;  —  we  soon  come  to  the  using  of  fic- 
tion as  a  mere  drug  to  deaden  consciousness 
with.  And  as  this  is  to  drift,  both  in  our  living 
and  our  reading  development,  into  the  most 
vicious  of  all  vicious  circles  of  stagnation,  we 
may,  for  our  present  purpose,  dismiss  such 
reading  of  fiction  from  our  consideration. 

But  if,  as  we  come  in  contact  with  the  reali- 
ties of  living,  we  begin,  in  any  measure  what- 
ever, to  develop  an  interest  in  the  meaning  of 
life;  if  we  experience  the  slightest  promptings 
of  a  will  to  inquire;  if,  hesitatingly  at  first,  but 
with  growing  curiosity  and  deepening  interest, 
we  begin  to  ask  questions  of  experience;  if, 
from  thus  asking  questions  of  experience,  we 
come  little  by  little  to  the  seeking  of  experience 
in  order  to  question  it, —  then  more  and  more 
consciously  and  purposefully  we  find  ourselves 
turning  to  fiction  and  enjoying  it  because  it 
synthesizes  our  own  observations  of  life  and 
extends  and  amplifies  and  interprets  them. 

Yet  this  is  only  one  of  its  functions.  For, 
since  new  attitudes  toward  experience  are  the 

228 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

source  of  all  new  hopes  and  new  dreams,  it 
follows  that  the  more  we  face  life  from  this  in- 
terested angle,  and  the  more  we  practice  the 
right  reading  of  science  and  history  and  phi- 
losophy and  fiction  itself  as  aids  to  such  facing, 
the  more  constantly  can  fiction  reassume  for 
us  its  legitimate  function  toward  the  "young" 
—  the  more  often,  that  is  to  say,  can  it  serve 
us  afresh  as  the  mould  for  new  hopes,  as  the 
concrete  expression  of  new  dreams;  in  short, 
as  the  means  of  making  tentative  imaginary 
syntheses  of  the  broader  life  we  are  thus  ap- 
proaching. 

It  was  to  these  constantly  readjusted  and 
..;~rganized  functions  of  fiction  that  we  re- 
ferred in  the  fifth  chapter,  in  saying  that 
"there  are  nursery  rhymes  for  every  mile  of 
the  way ;  love-stories  for  every  stage  of  growth ; 
adventure-tales  for  every  enlargement  of  our 
consciousness  and  understanding." 

v 

When  looked  at  from  this  point  of  view,  all 
reading  matter  becomes  an  invitation  to  us  in 
some  way  to  compare  notes  with  another  ob- 
server; either  upon  the  actuality  of  the  facts 

229 


HOW  TO  READ 

of  existence,  or  upon  the  relations  that  these 
facts  conceivably  bear  to  one  another  and  to 
ourselves.  And  the  distinctive  feature  of 
fiction  is  that  it  invites  us  to  undertake  this 
comparing  of  notes  by  formulating  for  our- 
selves some  particular,  imaginative  arrange- 
ment of  the  more  or  less  characteristic  and 
familiar  facts  of  our  common  experience,  so 
contrived  by  the  author  as  to  form  an  artificial 
synthesis,  or  appearance  of  completeness,  in  the 
human  drama  that  is  being  tumultuously  enacted 
before  our  eyes  and  within  ourselves. 

And  the  first  thing  that,  as  prospective  ac- 
ceptors of  such  fictional  invitations,  it  is  im- 
portant for  us  to  realize,  is  that  the  ultimate 
basis  of  every  such  artificial  synthesis  or  ap- 
pearance of  completeness  —  and  hence  the 
fundamental  factor  of  our  personal  formula- 
tion of  it  —  is  always  a  particular  way  of  look- 
ing at  things,  a  special  attitude  of  mind,  a 
mood  of  observation.  This  ultimate  fictional 
basis  is  never,  even  in  the  shallowest  and  trash- 
iest yellow-backed  time-killer,  the  plot  of  the 
story.  And  it  is  never,  even  in  the  most  stir- 
ring romance  or  in  the  most  shuddersome 
tragedy,  that  less   tangible  but  more  living 

2^0 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

thing  that  we  call  "the  story  itself."  It  is 
always  an  angle  of  observance,  a  human 
mood.  Thus  the  ultimate  basis  of  all  detec- 
tive stories  and  mystery  tales  is  the  mood  of 
momentarily  looking  at  life  as  a  challenge  to 
our  ingenuity.  And  the  ultimate  basis  of  all 
tales  of  adventurous  action  is  the  mood  of 
looking  at  the  world  as  an  openable  oyster. 
And  the  ultimate  basis  of  all  romance  is  the 
mood  of  imagining  our  dreams  fulfilled.  And 
the  ultimate  basis  of  all  real  tragedy  is  the 
mood  of  looking  at  the  inevitable  as  the  great 
consoler,  the  one  final  and  sanctioned  assumer 
of  our  responsibilities. 

So  that  in  electing  to  read  a  novel,  —  in  ac- 
cepting the  invitation  of  a  writer  of  fiction,  — 
we  have  to  become  the  guests  of  the  author's 
mood  before  we  can  intelligently  act  as  his 
collaborators.  We  should  in  no  case  forget  our 
guestship  until  we  have  felt  our  way  to  at 
least  a  tentative  recognition  of  the  mood  the 
author  is  asking  us  to  share  with  him.  And 
so  the  first  thing  that  is  demanded  of  us  in  be- 
ginning a  novel  is  an  attitude  of  active  and 
open-minded  inquiry  with  this  fact  in  mind. 
If  this  attitude  does  not  come  easy  to  us,  we 

231 


HOW  TO   READ 

should  force  ourselves  to  assume  it  until  it 
does.  And  the  first  and  most  effective  prelim- 
inary to  the  assuming  of  this  attitude  is  the 
deliberate  and  intentional  clearing  from  our 
minds  of  all  preferences,  preconceptions,  ex- 
pectations, and  demands  with  regard  to  what 
it  is  that  the  author  is  going  to  ask  of  us  and 
show  us;  at  the  same  time  holding  ourselves 
ready,  as  soon  as  we  have  found  the  clue,  to 
put  our  entire  equipment  unreservedly  at  his 
disposal  for  those  purposes  of  "constructive 
and  critical  formulation"  that  we  shall  pres- 
ently examine. 

VI 

But  before  going  on  to  examine  these,  it  will 
be  well  to  make  absolutely  certain  that  we  un- 
derstand, not  only  the  need  for  this  initial 
open-mindedness,  but  the  importance  of  con- 
sciously recognizing  and  falling  in  with  the 
author's  mood  at  the  earliest  possible  moment. 
For  we  do  not,  as  a  rule,  realize  how  con- 
stantly, in  every  kind  of  trying  to  see  what 
others  are  pointing  out  to  us,  we  are  hindered 
and  handicapped  and  defeated  by  precon- 
ceptions. 

232 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

For  example,  one  of  the  surprises  we  en- 
counter on  our  first  sea  voyage  is  the  discovery 
of  how  difficult  it  is  to  see  a  whale. 

It  is,  let  us  say,  the  third  day  out.  Good 
weather  has  enabled  us  to  acquire  what  we 
ignorantly  imagine  to  be  our  "sea  legs."  We 
no  longer  speak  of  "going  down  stairs."  And 
at  seven  bells  we  no  longer  do  surreptitious 
arithmetic  on  our  fingers  and  verify  the  re- 
sult by  covert  glances  at  our  watches.  In- 
deed, we  quite  fancy  ourselves  old  salts.  And 
then,  in  passing  our  steamer  chair,  a  ship's 
acquaintance  asks  us  if  we  have  seen  the 
whale. 

"Whale?"  we  exclaim  eagerly.  "No. 
Where  is  it?" 

And  he  explains  that  it  is  a  mile  or  so  off  the 
weather  bow  and  offers  to  show  it  to  us.  But 
when  we've  rushed  to  the  opposite  rail  and 
joined  the  knot  of  excited  people  gathered 
there,  we  can  see  nothing — nothing,  that  is, 
except  water  and  waves  and  sun-glints  and 
white  caps.  And  our  self-appointed  cicerone 
points  and  says,  "There!  Did  n't  you  see  him 
then?"  And  we  squint  in  the  direction  of  his 
extended  arm  and  say  no,  we  did  n't.  And  he 

233 


HOW  TO  READ 

becomes  more  and  more  explanatory,  and  we 
grow  more  and  more  obfuscated.  Until,  just  as 
he  is  on  the  point  of  giving  us  up  as  hopeless, 
we  happen  quite  by  accident  to  notice  an  in- 
significant feather  of  white  spray  spurt  up 
away  off  on  the  horizon,  and  to  hear  the  girl 
next  to  us  cry,  "There  he  blows!" 

And  we  say,  "That!    Is  that  a  whale?" 
And    our   friend    says,    "Why,    of   course. 
What  did  you  think  it  was?" 

And  then  (according  as  we  happen  to  be 
constituted)  we  either  go  back  to  our  steamer 
chair  and  our  novel,  saying  "Pooh!  A  nice 
fuss  over  nothing!"  or  else,  our  curiosity  hav- 
ing been  aroused,  we  take  the  trouble  to  back- 
track our  recent  mental  processes  and  so  dis- 
cover that  as  a  matter  of  fact  we  had  not  once 
tried  to  see  what  our  friend  was  pointing  out 
to  us,  but  had,  instead,  been  looking  demand- 
ingly  for  a  large,  square-headed,  black  fish 
with  forked  flukes  and  a  miniature  Old  Faith- 
ful spouting  intermittently  from  its  head.  In 
fine  we  discover  that  we  had  been  unable  to 
see  the  whale,  not  at  all  because  we  did  not 
know  what  a  whale  looked  like,  but  precisely 
because  we  thought  we  knew. 

234 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 


VII 

A  few  years  ago  Mr.  Will  Irwin  published  a 
little  volume  called  "The  Confessions  of  a 
Con  Man."  And  I  remember,  at  the  time  il 
appeared,  calling  the  attention  of  a  friend 
to  it  and  being  rather  taken  to  task  by  him  in 
consequence.  "  Did  you  enjoy  that  ?  "  he  asked 
me  with  fine  scorn.  And  when  I  had  owned  up 
that  I  had,  he  said,  "Why,  good  heavens,  the 
man  does  n't  give  away  a  single  confidence  trick 
that  has  not  been  public  property  for  years." 

And  this,  as  it  happened,  was  perfectly 
true.  But  it  was  also,  in  view  of  the  author's 
invitation  and  intention,  perfectly  immaterial. 
It  was,  indeed,  the  tacit  condition  upon  which 
the  "con  man's"  unintentional  and  far  more 
interesting  "confessions"  had  been  obtained. 
For  Mr.  Irwin,  having  gained  the  partial  con- 
fidence of  a  confidence  man,  had  been  wise 
enough  not  to  make  him  restive  or  suspicious 
by  trying  to  get  out  of  him  the  latest  secrets  of 
his  profession  —  those  tricks,  new  to-day  and 
old  to-morrow,  by  whose  newness  he  gained 
his  living.  He  had  been  glad  to  accept,  in  lieu 
of  "modern  instances,"  the  histories  of  deceits 

2J3 


HOW  TO  READ 

now  out-moded;  because,  in  reminiscing  about 
these,  the  man  spoke  openly  and  revealed  him- 
self without  guile.  Mr.  Irwin  had  thus  sur- 
prised a  secret  far  more  elusive  and  enduring 
than  that  of  the  "latest"  confidence  tricks. 
He  had  induced  the  man,  without  his  know- 
ing it,  to  "confess"  his  philosophy  of  life  and 
to  disclose  the  sanctions  of  his  self-esteem* 
And  in  his  book  Mr.  Irwin  was  offering  us  the 
interesting  opportunity  of  looking,  in  imagi- 
nation, through  a  grafter's  eyes  upon  a  graft- 
er's world;  of  finding  out,  in  imagination, 
what  it  might  be  like  to  be  the  proud  possessor 
of  sharp  wits  and  to  roam  a  happy  hunting- 
ground  where  the  only  animals  were  the  Gul- 
libles  and  the  Ungullibles. 

But  my  friend,  what  with  looking  intently 
for  a  large,  square-headed,  black  fish  spouting 
geysers,  had  failed  to  see  the  whale. 

He  had,  in  fact,  when  he  read  the  title  of 
Mr.  Irwin's  book,  made  up  his  mind  what  he 
wanted  Mr.  Irwin  to  show  him.  He  had  kept 
on  wanting  this  and  looking  for  it  to  the  end. 
And  in  condemning  Mr.  Irwin  as  a  writer  be- 
cause Mr.  Irwin  had  been  trying  to  show  him 
something  else  and  he  had  refused  to  let  him, 

236 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

he  had  passed  judgment  on  nothing  but  his 
own  skill  as  a  reader. 

Of  course  he  might  not  have  cared  to  accept 
Mr.  Irwin's  real  invitation.  And  he  might 
quite  properly  have  laid  the  book  down  as 
soon  as  he  had  discovered  the  actual  char- 
acter of  its  offering.  But  in  omitting  a  pre- 
liminary, open-minded  seeking-out  of  the  au- 
thor's attitude  of  observation,  and  then,  on 
that  basis,  either  looking  at  his  whale  or  re- 
fusing to  bother  with  it,  he  had  failed  in  the 
first  requirement  of  the  intelligent  reader. 

VIII 

Five  years  ago  John  Galsworthy  published 
his  novel  "The  Patrician."  And  in  the 
months  that  followed  its  appearance  I  met 
several  confirmed  admirers  of  Galsworthy's 
work  who  seemed  disappointed  in  the  new 
book.  They  were  even  inclined  to  be  a  bit 
grouchy  over  —  well,  that  was  exactly  where 
the  trouble  came  in  —  over,  let  us  say,  some 
indefinable  injustice  toward  them,  whether 
of  omission  or  of  commission  they  could  not 
tell,  of  which  they  dimly  felt  Mr.  Galsworthy 
to  have  been  guilty.  This  fact  interested  me  at 

237 


HOW  TO  READ 

the  time  and  may  well  interest  us  now;  for 
its  explanation  illuminates  one  of  the  pitfalls 
that  our  preconceptions  are  constantly  dig- 
ging for  our  appreciation. 

To  begin  with,  knowing  the  men,  I  am  per- 
suaded that  "The  Patrician,"  divested  of 
Mr.  Galsworthy's  name  as  author,  would  at 
once  have  been  recognized  by  them  as  the 
very  beautiful  piece  of  work  and  as  the  sound 
and  subtle  criticism  of  life  that  it  is.  But  hav- 
ing, through  a  series  of  years  and  of  nov- 
els, accustomed  themselves  to  reading  Gals- 
Worthy  in  the  attitude  of  mind  that  he  had 
theretofore  maintained  toward  life  in  his 
work,  they  had  insisted  upon  reading  "The 
Patrician"  in  that  mood  and  had  ascribed 
their  consequent  puzzlement  to  the  author. 

Galsworthy,  in  his  earlier  novels,  is  suc- 
cinctly describable  as  a  man  who  saw  with  un- 
usual clearness  the  hidden  interdependences 
and  masked  reciprocal  relations  of  human 
intercourse,  and  who  presented  these  to  us 
in  terms  of  the  ironies  resulting  from  their 
non-recognition.  While  utterly  free  from  any 
rancor  against  the  individual  exponents  of  the 
amiable  and  well-intentioned  narrow-mi  nded- 

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HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

ness  that  he  had  portrayed,  he  was  never  con- 
tent until,  by  the  exercise  of  just  that  sym- 
pathetic and  tolerant  understanding  of  them 
that  he  possessed,  he  had,  as  it  were,  given 
them  enough  rope  to  hang  themselves  by. 
Naturally  enough,  he  had  been  called  a  cynic. 
And  although  behind  the  openly  caustic  irony 
of  his  novels  there  had  ever  lain  the  essen- 
tially cleansing  humor  and  healing  charity  of 
his  comprehension,  yet  having  dubbed  him 
"cynic"  his  readers  had  come  to  seek  him  out 
in  the  confident  expectation  of  finding  a  sly 
dog. 

And  lo,  the  author  of  "The  Patrician"  was 
a  poet! 

The  novel  is  a  wonderful  word-picture  of  a 
family  of  aristocrats  with  its  three  genera- 
tions subtly  differentiated  by  their  succes- 
sively lessening  consciousness  of  caste;  with 
its  many  members,  clean-cut  as  cameos,  seen 
from  the  authentic  and  indicative  angles  of 
their  individual  outlooks;  with  its  patriarchs 
resigned  or  desperately  at  bay  before  the  in- 
roads of  modernity,  and  its  high-hearted  and 
stern-minded  youths  equally  yet  variously 
fretting  at  the  curb  of  caste-tradition.    The 

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HOW  TO  READ 

story  is  wrought  with  infinite  loving  labor,  in 
words  weighed  to  the  fraction  of  intrinsic  ap- 
positeness  and  in  phrases  of  exquisite  imagery. 
Yet  for  all  its  beauty  there  is  a  sardonic  note 
in  its  denouement  —  the  echo  of  a  knell.  For 
the  work  is  not  only  a  portrait,  but  a  prophecy. 
It  is  a  valedictory  as  well  as  an  appreciation. 
It  is  the  swan  song  of  a  type. 

In  writing  it,  Mr.  Galsworthy  asked  his 
readers  to  assume  in  turn  the  outlooks  of  three 
generations  and  from  these  to  construct  with 
him  a  particular  mood  of  observation  toward 
the  passing  order  of  the  English  nobility.  But 
these  guests  of  his  mood  in  "The  Man  of 
Property"  and  "The  Country  House"  had 
accepted  his  new  invitation  in  the  spirit  of  the 
old  and  so  missed  its  meaning. 

IX 

Fortunately  for  the  student  of  right  read- 
ing, it  is  in  the  simpler  forms  of  fiction  —  in 
love-stories  proper,  in  mystery-mongering 
tales,  in  stories  of  action  and  adventure  and 
the  like  —  that  the  mood  of  the  author,  the 
angle  of  observation  from  which  the  novel 
is  written,  is  most  single-minded  in  itself;  is 

24.0 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

most  quickly  and  openly  and  once-for-all  re- 
vealed; and  is  thus  most  easily  and  certainly 
to  be  recognized  and  fallen  in  with.  In  many 
of  these  cases  the  first  paragraph  or  the  first 
page  contains  a  full  clue  to  it.  In  many  such 
instances  one  senses  the  book's  mood  instinc- 
tively and  adjusts  one's  self  to  it  spontane- 
ously and  without  ever  consciously  recogniz- 
ing that  it  has  one.  But  to  allow  one's  self  to 
do  this  is  bad  practice.  For  it  is  by  the  habit 
and  consequent  training  of  consciously  estab- 
lishing this  mood  relation  with  one's  more 
naive  and  obvious  authors  that  one  acquires 
most  quickly  the  ability  to  collaborate  intel- 
ligently with  authors  who  are  dealing  with 
life  in  more  sophisticated  and  more  complex 
moods. 

For  one  thing  it  is  very  easy  to  fall  into  the 
habit  of  expecting  to  have  this  simple  mood- 
relationship  instantly  established  for  us  by  the 
author,  and  of  then  being  "  uninterested  "  if  an 
author  does  so  simple  a  thing  as  to  begin  by 
thoroughly  outlining  a  situation  before  he 
develops  his  way  of  looking  at  what  happens 
there.  Yet  this  is  constantly  being  done.  It  is, 
indeed,  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception  for 

241 


HOW  TO  READ 

us  to  need  to  maintain  our  open-minded  at- 
titude toward  the  author's  selected  way  of 
looking  at  things  until  we  have  actively  co- 
operated with  him  in  the  formulation  of  his 
scenic  setting  and  in  the  initial  conception  of 
his  characters. 

And  perhaps  the  large  majority  of  those 
readers  who  are  naturally  inclined  toward 
right  reading  do  this  much  automatically  and 
without  any  actual  recognition  of  what  they 
are  doing.  But  it  is  none  the  less  bad  practice 
on  that  account.  For  it  is  exactly  by  doing 
this  consciously  and  watchfully  that  we  can 
best  develop  that  quick  responsiveness  to 
mood,  that  instant  ability  to  recognize  dis- 
closed angles  of  observation,  and  that  supple 
readiness  to  assume  them  as  they  are  revealed, 
that  is  the  first  requisite  for  our  intelligent 
reading  of  an  author  whose  own  fictional  at- 
titude is  really  that  of  observing  the  comedy 
aspects  or  the  tragedy  aspects  of  the  conflict- 
ing attitudes  of  others.  It  is  perhaps  not  too 
much  to  say  that  the  failure  to  develop,  in 
one  way  or  another,  this  responsiveness  and 
quickness  in  recognition  and  adaptation  is 
what  most  frequently  prevents  our  progress- 

242 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

ing  beyond  the  beginnings  of  fictional  right 
reading.  And  it  is  certain  that  the  higher  we  go 
in  the  scale  of  fiction,  the  more  necessary  does 
this  development  become  for  us.  For  modern 
fiction  tends  more  and  more  toward  being  a 
dramatization  of  outlook,  a  demonstration  of 
the  varying  possibilities  of  points  of  view.  Not 
only  are  there  countless  novels  written  to-day 
that  invite  us,  as  novels  have  never  invited  us 
before,  to  look  at  life  through  the  eyes  of  the 
"other  half";  whose  way  of  living  as  well  as 
whose  point  of  view  has  been  ignored  or  de- 
spised by  us;  but  much  modern  fiction  of  the 
first  order  is,  in  its  final  intention,  a  mood- 
constructor;  that  is  to  say,  an  invitation  to 
us  to  formulate  for  ourselves,  under  the  guid- 
ance of  the  author,  and  out  of  the  gradually 
assembled  implications  of  the  development 
of  his  story,  a  final,  tentative,  point  of  view 
of  our  own  —  a  "one  way  of  looking  at  life," 
an  achieved  synthesis  of  estimating  out- 
look. 

Take,  for  example,  Arnold  Bennett's  "The 
Old  Wives'  Tale."  Here  is  a  novel  which  fol- 
lows, in  the  minutest  and  most  "realistic"  de- 
tail, the  personal  histories  and  interwoven  at- 

243 


HOW  TO  READ 

titudes  of  two  and  a  half  generations  of  a 
middle-class  English  family.  In  a  leisurely, 
apparently  ''plotless,"  and  (by  reason  of  its 
unemotional  treatment  of  "events")  super- 
ficially uneventful,  manner,  it  carries  us,  from 
the  youth  of  its  two  leading  characters  and 
from  the  middle  age  of  their  parents,  to  the 
ultimate  deaths  of  every  one  closely  connected 
with  the  story  except  a  single  and,  by  then, 
middle-aged  and  utterly  worthless  representa- 
tive of  the  third  generation  —  a  survivor  who 
by  his  mere  surviving  stands  before  us  as  the 
sole  and  completely  negligible  result,  hu- 
manly speaking,  of  the  whole  intensely  hu- 
man and  many-sidedly  interesting  struggle. 
Yet  it  achieves,  for  those  of  its  readers  who 
have  read  it  with  this  open-minded  and  pro- 
gressively constructive  responsiveness,  a  com- 
plete, dramatic  amalgamation  of  two  points 
of  view  that  had  never  before  been  success- 
fully combined  in  fiction:  —  that  of  the  su- 
preme importance  and  significance  of  life  to 
the  individual;  and  that  of  the  supreme  insig- 
nificance and  unimportance  of  the  individual 
or  of  any  line  of  individuals  to  the  mysterious, 
long-sighted  purposes  of  Life. 

244 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

x 

Let  us  assume,  now,  that  we  have  grasped 
the  principle  involved  in  this  initial,  active, 
and  open-minded  seeking-out  of  the  attitude 
the  author  is  asking  us  to  share  with  him. 
And  let  us  assume  (deferring  for  the  present 
our  consideration  of  novels  wherein  the  con- 
trolling mood  of  the  author  does  not  reveal 
itself  either  early  or  simply)  that  we  have  de- 
termined, in  every  obviously  mooded  novel 
that  we  read,  definitely  to  identify  the  au- 
thor's attitude  at  the  earliest  possible  moment. 

The  important  point  that  we  next  have 
to  note  in  formulating  rules  for  the  right  read- 
ing of  novels,  is  this:  That  having  recognized 
the  mood  of  the  author  and  having  either 
spontaneously  "fallen  in  with  it"  or  placed 
ourselves  in  sympathetic  readiness  to  do  so, 
we  must,  from  then  on,  view  the  entire  world 
of  the  story — its  unfolding  situations,  its 
developing  characters,  their  deploying  rela- 
tions to  each  other,  and  all  questions  of  the 
relations  of  ourselves  or  of  the  author  to  these 
— from  the  point  of  view  of  this  governing  and 
basic  attitude. 


HOW  TO  READ 

Do  not  misunderstand  me.  I  do  not  for  a 
moment  mean  that  we  should  not,  in  the  most 
ordinary  and  unself-conscious  and  zestful  sense 
of  the  words,  "  read  our  book."  I  mean  that  we 
must  deal  with  all  upwelling  inquiries  as  to 
probability,  consistency,  truth  to  type,  and 
mutual  attitude  of  characters,  with  each  out- 
cropping manifestation  of  personal  like  and 
dislike  of  actors  or  actions,  with  all  disap- 
pointments of  unconsciously  aroused  expecta- 
tion, or  impulses  toward  resentment  based  on 
conventional  attitudes  of  mind, —  in  short, 
with  any  and  all  subsidiary  curiosities  and 
any  and  all  promptings  to  pass  judgment  that 
arise  in  the  course  of  "reading  our  book," 
—  with  primary  and  specific  relation  to  this 
established  angle  of  observation. 

Suppose  that  an  author's  story  deals  with 
a  man  torn  between  the  conflicting  urges  of 
an  adventurous  Wanderlust  and  a  persistent 
dream  of  a  wife,  children,  and  the  coziness  of 
the  feathered  nest. 

The  author's  mood  of  observation  may  be 
that  of  the  romantic  portraying  of  sentiment 
triumphant  over  obstacles.  Or  it  may  be  that 
of  the  romanic  portrayal  of  the  rolling  stone's 

246 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

toying  with  successive  mossbeds.  Or  it  may 
be  a  mood  of  good-natured  irony,  smiling  in 
sympathetic  understanding  of  the  irreconcila- 
bility of  human  desires.  Or  it  may  be  that  of 
looking  with  hilarious  amusement  at  the  spec- 
tacle of  a  human  donkey,  now  running  franti- 
cally toward  this  haystack  and  now  toward 
that,  and  finally  starving  between  them.  It 
may  be  the  mood  of  looking  at  this  hero-of- 
divided-allegiance  through  the  eyes  of  any- 
one of  a  dozen  types  of  human  onlookers. 
Or  it  may  be  a  mood  of  looking  at  the  world 
and  at  life  through  the  bi-focused  eyes  of  the 
hero  himself. 

Any  one  of  these  attitudes  will  be  humanly 
valid.  The  author's  development  of  his  story 
from  the  chosen  point  of  view  may  be  con- 
sistently true  to  mood  and  revealingly  or 
amusingly  interpretative  of  our  own  hearts 
and  natures  when  so  regarded.  But  in  just  so 
far  as  we  allow  the  criteria  of  judgment  that 
belong  to  another  way  of  looking  at  things  to 
color  our  reactions  to  the  story  as  presented, 
in  exactly  so  far  shall  we  fail  in  our  right  read- 
ing of  it,  and  shall  we  miss  whatever  dividends 
of  enjoyment  or  of  added  responsiveness  to 

247 


HOW  TO   READ 

life  our  proper  collaboration  with  the  author 
might  have  brought  to  us. 

And  of  course,  since  this  is  manifestly  true 
in  the  case  of  a  simply  conceived  and  singly 
mooded  story  of  idealized  sentiment  or  smil- 
ing satire,  it  is  progressively  true,  in  a  geo- 
metric ratio  of  importance,  in  novels  where  we 
are  asked  to  look,  first  from  one  angle  and 
then  from  another,  at  the  same  series  of  hu- 
man actions;  or  to  maintain  the  attitude  of 
impersonal  and  inquiring  observers  toward 
a  conflict  of  clashing  moods  and  their  result- 
ing misunderstandings;  or  to  build  up  a  new 
mood  of  observation  never  before  attained  by 
us,  by  the  constructive  and  dramatic  juxtapo- 
sition of  successive  and  interrelated  and  mood- 
derived  realizations  of  relationship. 

So  that  one  of  the  most  important  habits 
that  the  reader  can  form  —  a  habit  that  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  he  must  acquire  and 
develop  if  he  is  going  to  increase  his  ability 
to  read  better,  and  more  revealing  and  more 
"up-channel"  fiction  —  is  this  habit  of  dif- 
ferential criticism  based  on  the  criteria  of 
outlook. 


248 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

XI 

And  this  brings  us  finally  face  to  face 
with  those  problems  of  the  "constructive  and 
critical"  activity  demanded  of  the  right  read- 
ers of  a  novel  that  we  have  repeatedly  re- 
ferred to. 

The   phrase   has   a   somewhat  portentous 
sound.    It  suggests  responsibilities  to  be  as- 
sumed; and  we  are  prone  to  shirk  the  con- 
scious assumption  of  responsibilities.    It  sug- 
gests work;  and  wre  are  apt  to  look  askance  at 
the  idea  of  work  in  connection  with  the  read- 
ing of  fiction,  which  is  always  undertaken  and 
always  should  be  undertaken  in  some  degree 
in  the  spirit  of  "play"  as  we  have  already  de- 
fined that  impulse.    But  the  truth  is  that  we 
are  invariably  both  constructive  and  critical 
in  all  our  reading;  and  the  only  real  problem 
before  us  is  that  of  so  directing  these  per- 
fectly normal  but  often  misapplied  function- 
ings  of  our  minds   that  they  may  more  and 
more  correctly  and  cooperatively  minister  to 
our  formulation  for  ourselves  of  the  author's 
conception. 


249 


HOW  TO   READ 

XII 

We  have  already  armed  ourselves  with  a 
realization  of  the  constructive  methods  we 
employ  in  reading,  and  of  the  more  or  less  un- 
conscious accompaniment  of  critical  activity, 
corrective,  recognitional,  and  comparative, 
that  is  automatically  maintained  at  the  backs 
of  our  minds  as  we  read.  And  we  have  already 
agreed  that  it  is  important  for  us  to  identify 
and  fall  in  with  the  main  observational  mood 
of  the  novel  we  are  reading;  to  be  ready  to  do 
the  same  with  any  subsidiary  moods  (as  the 
points  of  view  of  individual  characters)  that 
are  introduced  as  parts  of  its  subject-matter; 
and  that  we  must  scrupulously  view  the  entire 
world  of  the  story,  including  its  subsidiary 
ways  of  looking  at  things,  from  the  selected 
angle  of  envisagement.  But  the  very  act  of 
identifying  this  angle  is  a  critical  act.  And 
every  glance  by  which  we  assure  ourselves 
that  we  are  maintaining  it,  or  discover  that  we 
are  not,  is  an  act  of  criticism.  So  that  our 
problem  is  largely  one  of  directive  application. 

Let  us,  however,  begin  by  considering  the 
simpler  problems  of  construction. 

250 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

And  the  first  rule  that  we  should  keep  in 
mind  in  the  matter  of  "constructive"  coop- 
eration with  the  author,  is  that  we  should 
hold  ourselves  ready  at  any  moment,  and  quite 
irrespective  of  our  having  or  not  having  dis- 
covered the  trend  of  his  intention,  to  put  our 
entire  experiential  equipment  and  the  best 
efforts  of  our  "mental  movie"  outfit  and 
of  our  "idea  distillery"  at  his  disposal  for 
the  production  of  whatever  scenes,  character 
conceptions,  or  details  of  situational  develop- 
ment he  may  ask  to  have  produced.  We  may, 
or  may  not,  see  why  he  wants  them.  The  in- 
ference is  that  they  are  going  to  be  needed. 
Later  on,  if  we  discover  that  he  is  given  to 
wasteful  or  unwarranted  demands  on  us  in 
this  regard  (as,  for  instance,  if  he  proves  to  be 
a  landscape-describing  crank,  or  interpolates 
airings  of  his  own  views  that  are  irrelevant 
and  do  not  "pay  their  own  way"),  we  may 
skim  or  skip  judiciously.  But  "skimming" 
and  "skipping,"  whether  we  realize  it  or  not,  , 
is  a  critical  act.  It  is  either  a  conscious  criti- 
cism of  the  author,  or  an  unconscious  criticism 
of  ourselves.  So  it  should  be  used  with  care 
and  in  full  realization  of  its  meaning.  It  is  an 

251 


HOW  TO  READ 

excellent  rule  to  read  at  least  a  hundred  pages 
of  any  novel  before  refusing  the  fullest  con- 
structive cooperation  in  our  power  to  any 
passage  of  it. 

XIII 

But  there  is  another  kind  of  constructive 
activity  and  ability  that  is  demanded  of  us  in 
novel-reading  besides  this  simple  visualizing 
of  scenes  and  of  action,  this  preparatory  rec- 
ognition of  ideas  and  attitudes,  this  primary 
conceiving  of  characters  and  motives.  All 
these  things  are,  so  to  say,  the  manufactured 
parts  (manufactured  by  us  at  the  author's 
order  out  of  our  own  stock  of  experience)  that 
we  are  gradually,  under  the  author's  direction, 
to  assemble  into  the  completed  structure  of 
his  artificial  synthesis  —  that  is  to  say,  into 
our  formulation  of  his  conception  of  it.  And 
it  is  because  we  cannot  tell,  beforehand,  what 
use  is  going  to  be  made  of  these  parts,  or  how 
important  any  least  one  of  them  may  prove  to 
be,  that  we  should  cooperate  whole-heartedly 
in  their  construction  as  they  are  called  for, 
and  should  then  keep  them  open-mindedly 
at  hand  ready  for  whatever  use  the  story  re- 

252 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

quires  us  to  make  of  them.  We  are  likely  at 
any  moment  to  be  required  to  bring  separate 
characters,  ideas,  impulses,  and  attitudes  into 
imaginary  contact  and  to  construct  the  atmos- 
phere and  implications  of  their  conjunction; 
and  we  should  be  as  alertly  and  whole-heartedly 
cooperative  in  this  secondary  construction  as 
in  the  first. 

But  whereas,  thus  far,  we  have  been  con- 
sidering our  constructive  duties  separately, 
we  now  arrive  at  a  point  where  it  is  no  longer 
possible  to  leave  our  critical  activities  out  of 
account. 

XIV 

The  least  critical  reader  of  us  all  passes  con-  , 
stant  judgment  as  he  reads  (i)  upon  the  au-  \ 
thor;  (2)  upon  the  characters  of  the  story;  and 
(3)  upon  himself. 

(1)  He  yawns  and  says  to  himself  that  the 
author  is  a  bore.  Or  he  grins  and  owns  that 
the  author  is  a  clever  wag.  Or  he  bristles  up 
and  says  that  the  author  must  be  an  atheist 
or  a  libertine. 

(2)  He  is  very  charitable  to  the  characters 
who  exhibit  his  own  pet  weaknesses.   Or  he  is 

253 


HOW  TO  READ 

bitterly  condemnatory  of  the  character  who 
yields  to  his  own  most  dreaded  vice.  Or  he  ap- 
proves the  character  who  acts  as  he  likes  to 
think  he  acts,  and  condemns  the  character  who 
acts,  without  justification,  as  he  often  acts 
himself,  but  with  a  perfectly  good  excuse. 

(3)  He  says  to  himself  that  he  "can't  un- 
derstand" how  any  one  can  do  this  or  that. 
Or  he  tells  himself  that  he  "  would  have  done 
the  same  thing"  as  some  one  in  the  story.  Or 
he  says  that  he  "has  no  time"  for  hard-luck 
stories,  or  that  this,  that,  or  the  other  point  of 
view  "makes  him  tired." 

But  of  course  the  reader  who  experiences 
these  feelings  or  expresses  them  to  himself  as 
he  reads,  does  not  necessarily  recognize  them 
as  criticisms;  and  is  still  less  likely  to  recog- 
nize the  self-criticism  involved  in  the  third 
division.  But  as  soon  as  we  see  these  feelings 
tabulated  as  above,  we  recognize  the  critical 
nature  of  them.  And,  moreover,  a  little  ex- 
amination suffices  to  show  us  that  they  are  not, 
really,  three  kinds  of  criticism,  but  three  dif- 
ferent employments  of  a  criticism  that  is  al- 
ways three-sided.  For  reading  a  novel  is  a 
triangular  operation  in  which  (1)  the  author, 

254 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

(2)  the  reader,  and  (3)  their  joint  production 
are  inseparably  linked.  There  are  two  creators 
of  every  character,  of  every  situation,  of  every 
outcome  of  the  conjunction  of  characters  and 
situations  —  the  author  and  the  reader.  Both 
are  responsible,  not  only  for,  but  to,  their 
joint  production.  Every  criticism  felt  or  ex- 
pressed by  the  reader  involves  all  three.  And 
every  judgment  of  the  reader,  to  be  a  self- 
helpful  and  self-guiding  judgment,  must  take 
into  account  the  relations  of  the  thing  judged 
to  the  other  two. 

xv 

Going  back,  then,  to  our  interrupted  con- 
sideration of  the  more  complex  "construc- 
tion" involved  in  the  bringing  of  separate 
characters,  ideas,  and  attitudes  into  the  im- 
agined contacts  of  developing  situations,  and 
thus,  stage  by  stage,  assembling  the  total  con- 
ception of  a  novel,  we  see  that  this  must  be 
done,  not  only  in  open-minded  and  whole- 
hearted cooperation  of  reader  with  author,  but 
with  a  discriminating,  three-pointed  criticism 
always  ready,  at  the  back  of  the  reader's  mind, 
to   examine,  correct,  and   co-relate   his  own 

255 


HOW  TO  READ 

instinctive  reactions  to  these  combinations 
and  to  their  results. 

Among  the  commonest  errors  of  novel- 
reading,  for  example,  are:  For  a  reader  to  as- 
cribe to  the  author  the  opinions  of  one  of  his 
characters,  and  to  judge  the  author's  mind  or 
morals  or  character  accordingly,  and  to  read 
the  rest  of  his  book  under  the  bias  of  that  un- 
critical ascription.  Or  for  a  reader  to  criticize 
a  character,  or  the  author,  or  both,  because  the 
character  acts,  or  fails  to  act,  in  accordance 
with  the  conventional  requirements  of  another 
way  of  looking  at  things.  Or  for  a  reader  to 
call  the  author  a  pessimist,  or  some  other  hard 
name,  because  the  logical  development  of  the 
adopted  point  of  view  discloses  inevitable 
human  attitudes  that  the  reader  did  n't  an- 
ticipate when  he  consented  to  adopt  it. 

And  not  only  are  these  errors  manifestly 
due  to  a  lack  of  "critical"  as  well  as  "con- 
structive" activity  on  the  reader's  part,  or  to 
criticism  misapplied  and  ill-directed,  or  to  a 
one-sided,  or  two-sided,  instead  of  the  required 
three-sided  criticism  of  a  three-sided  problem, 
but  it  is  also  evident  that  any  reader's  final 
formulation  of  the  author's  complete  concep- 

256 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

tion  will  be  discolored  or  actually  deformed  by 
such  carelessly  conducted  reading. 

XVI 

And  this  brings  us  to  the  last  points  we  have 
to  consider  under  the  head  of  "How  to  Read 
a  Novel";  namely,  our  real  relation  to  fictions 
as  wholes:  and  the  importance  (i)  of  keeping 
this  relation  in  mind  as  we  read  them;  (2)  of 
employing  it  as  a  criterion  of  judgment  when 
we  face  our  completed  formulations  of  them; 
and  (3)  of  remembering  it  when,  as  we  con- 
stantly do,  we  employ  past  fictional  formu- 
lations as  bases  of  other  judgments  and 
as  elements  in  other  idea  and  attitude  con- 
structions. 

In  an  early  chapter  we  spoke  of  one  of  our 
unconscious  urges  toward  reading  as  the  need, 
experienced  by  us  all,  of  somehow  creating 
"oases  of  orderliness"  in  the  chaos  of  our  re- 
lations to  life. 

And  more  recently  we  defined  fiction  as  a 
contrived  synthesis  or  appearance  of  complete- 
ness in  the  tumultuous  flux  and  flow  of  the 
human  drama  that  goes  endlessly  on  within  us 
and  about  us. 

257 


HOW  TO  READ 

And  here,  in  a  nutshell,  either  expressed  or 
implied,  are  our  real  relations  to  novels  as 
wholes. 

We  cannot,  being  ourselves  a  part  of  the 
flux  of  life,  conceive  its  entirety.  Nor  can  we 
conceive  of  the  million-stranded,  beginning- 
less  and  endless  portion  of  it  that  we  do  per- 
ceive, as  forming  in  itself  a  completeness.  All 
that  we  can  do,  and  what  by  the  inescapable 
necessity  of  our  inborn  needs  we  are  constantly 
forced  to  do,  is  to  keep  variously  cutting  chaos 
up  into  sections  that  can,  from  certain  points 
of  view,  be  regarded  as  complete  in  themselves, 
and  thus  examine  it  piecemeal. 

That  is  what  physics  and  biology  and  psy- 
chology and  agriculture  and  chemistry  and 
astronomy  —  what  science,  in  a  word,  is  busy 
doing.  That  is  what  fetishism  and  superstition 
and  faith  and  theology  and  morals  and  ethics 
and  philosophy  are  at.  And  that,  in  its  field, 
is  the  function  of  fiction;  which  variously 
uses  as  part  of  its  constructive  material  the 
common  activities  and  special  attitudes  of  all 
these  other  decipherers  of  chaos. 

But  there  is  an  esthetic  as  well  as  an  in- 
tellectual appeal  in  fiction;  and  the  novel  is 

258 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

not  alone  an  "appearance  of  completeness," 
playful,  diverting,  or  explanatory,  presented 
to  our  understanding,  but  an  art  form — which 
is  to  say  a  means  of  at  once  arousing  and  satis- 
fying our  emotional  need  for  self-fulfillment. 

XVII 

If  you  will  turn  to  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis  and  will  read  its  account  of  God's 
first  labors;  his  dividing  the  primal  void  and 
formlessness  into  light  and  darkness,  and  his 
placing  of  the  sun  and  moon  in  the  firmament; 
you  will  find  upon  reading  the  sentence  — 

And  the  morning  and  the  evening  were  the 
first  day 

—  that  you  experience  a  distinct  and  pleasura- 
ble satisfaction  in  the  statement.  That  satis- 
faction is  essentially  an  esthetic  one.  Your 
mind  has  found  an  appearance  of  complete- 
ness to  recognize  and  rest  upon.  Moreover, 
if  you  will  examine  the  form  of  this  statement, 
you  will  find  that  no  little  part  of  your  pleas- 
ure in  it  derives  from  the  perfect  fitness  and 
rhythm  of  the  words  —  a  fitness  that  is  a  con- 
stituting element  of  beauty,  and  a  rhythm 

259 


HOW  TO  READ 

that  first  helps  to  arouse  in  you  an  emotional 
anticipation,  and  then  guides  it  to  its  fulfill- 
ment. 

And  here,  again  in  a  nutshell,  we  have  the 
germs  both  of  esthetic  reaction  and  of  the 
functioning  of  art. 

XVIII 

The  novel,  then,  is  a  contrived  appearance 
of  completeness  in  the  chaotic  drama  of  life; 
an  imagined  phase  of  that  drama,  more  or  less 
arbitrarily  fenced  off  so  that  from  a  certain 
point  of  view  we  can  regard  it  as  complete  in 
itself;  and  at  the  same  time  so  constructed 
that  it  rhythmically  arouses  in  us,  and  then 
momentarily  satisfies,  some  inherent  need  of 
self-fulfillment. 

Manifestly  no  reading  of  a  novel  that  does 
not  take  all  these  facts  into  account,  and  con- 
structively and  critically  cooperate  in  their 
realization,  can,  in  the  full  sense,  be  a  right 
reading. 

And  it  is  therefore  important  that,  in  read- 
ing a  novel,  we  keep  our  real  relation  to  fic- 
tions as  wholes  in  mind. 

Yet  this  involves  a  difficulty. 

260 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

Ve  only  succeed  in  imagining  the  phase  of 
living  that  a  novel  presents  in  proportion  as 
we  achieve  an  illusion  of  its  reality  in  read- 
ing it. 

Yet  if,  even  in  the  reading,  we  regard  its 
ultimate  "truth"  as  anything  but  relative, 
we  risk  missing  its  real  significance  to  us. 

Yet  to  the  beginner,  a  full  recognition  of 
either  of  these  aspects  is  destructive  of  the 
other. 

However,  the  two  recognitions  are  not  in- 
compatible. On  the  contrary,  the  more  we 
practice  the  binocular  vision  of  their  coinci- 
dent employment,  the  more  will  they  prove  to 
enhance  our  enjoyment  and  to  cross-fertilize 
our  intellectual  and  esthetic  reactions  to  the 
story.  But  personal  practice,  and  a  persistent 
and  interested  experimenting  in  first  alternat- 
ing and  then  combining  these  ways  of  looking 
at  a  story,  is  the  only  rule  for  attaining  their 
joint  employment. 

A  child,  suddenly  recalled  to  the  fact  that  a 
theatrical  performance  he  is  witnessing  is  all 
make-believe,  has  his  illusions  roughly  de- 
stroyed and  his  pleasure  killed.  An  alert 
and  understanding  onlooker  at  a  performance 

261 


HOW  TO  READ 

of  John  Galsworthy's  "The  Pigeon,"  on  the 
other  hand,  is  simultaneously  conscious  and 
draws  the  final  flavor  of  his  appreciation  from 
the  combined  realization  of  the  play's  fine  il- 
lusion of  reality,  its  purely  relative  "  truth  "  as 
an  ironic  criticism  of  life,  and  the  inherent  art 
of  its  complexly  aroused  and  subtly  satisfied 
emotions.  And  the  gap  between  these  two  at- 
titudes, or  between  similar  attitudes  in  the 
reading  of  fiction,  is  not  to  be  bridged  without 
personal  interest  and  personal  effort.  Yet  it 
is  well  worth  bridging.  And  the  realization 
that  it  is  bridgable,  the  reasons  for  bridging  it, 
and  the  advice  to  keep  trying  with  these  un- 
derstandings in  mind,  are  here  offered  as  in- 
centives to  the  undertaking  and  as  directions 
for  going  about  it.  And  the  reasons  for  wanting 
to  bridge  the  gap  are  that  it  is  only  by  gradu- 
ally doing  so  that  we  grow  into  a  full  respon- 
siveness to  fiction's  many-faceted  offerings 
to  us  and  consequently  into  profiting  by  its 
many-phased  ministerings  to  our  needs.  Also 
that  failure  to  do  this  is  the  cause  of  most  of 
our  driftings  into  stagnation  in  the  reading  of 
fiction. 

And  to  give  a  single  yet  adequate  illustra- 

262 


HOW  TO  READ  A  NOVEL 

tion  of  this  it  is  necessary  only  to  point  out 
that  it  is  by  a  realization  of  fiction's  synthetic 
and  artistic  relations  to  us  as  above  outlined, 
and  by  a  more  and  more  interested  reading  of 
it  with  these  in  mind,  that  we  gradually  escape 
from  the  dwarfing  tyranny  of  our  demand  for 
a  "happy  ending"  into  a  realization  that  we 
need  the  self-fulfillment  of  imagined  failure  as 
well  as  that  of  imagined  success;  and  that  the 
interpretatively  valid  completeness  of  any  fic- 
tional synthesis,  and  not  its  "  happy  "  or  "  un- 
happy" "ending,"  is  the  ultimate  source  of 
all  real  intellectual  profit,  or  esthetic  pleasure, 
or  emotional  fulfillment  to  be  derived  from  it. 

XIX 

As  to  the  importance  of  employing  our 
ripening  realization  of  these  relationships  as 
the  criterion  of  our  judgment  when  we  face 
the  completed  formulation  of  a  novel,  and  as 
to  the  importance  of  remembering  these  rela- 
tionships and  these  judgments  when,  as  we 
constantly  do,  we  employ  past  fictional  for- 
mulations as  bases  of  other  judgments  on  life, 
and  as  elements  in  other  idea  and  attitude  con- 
structions:—  the  importance  of  these  prac- 

263 


HOW  TO  READ 

tices  and  the  value  of  gradually  developing 
them  are  by  now  self-evident. 

For,  since  the  novel  is  an  imaginary  synthe- 
sis by  means  of  which  we  at  once  isolate  and 
examine  our  own  conceptions  of  life  and  com- 
pare notes  with  the  author,  not  to  learn  to 
read  it  as  such,  and  judge  it  as  such,  and  em- 
ploy our  memories  of  the  experience  as  such, 
is  to  fail  in  learning  to  read.  And,  since  the 
novel  is  also  an  art  form;  not  to  learn  to  read 
it,  constructively  aware  of  its  rhythmic  arous- 
ings  of  emotional  anticipation,  and  not  to 
learn  to  judge  it  critically  by  its  valid  or  in- 
valid satisfyings  of  their  requirements,  and 
not  to  remember  and  use  the  memory  of  these 
things  for  what  they  are,  is  to  fail  both  in  the 
flowering  and  the  seeding  of  fictional  right 
reading. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 
I 

There  is  a  simple  yet  dramatic  experiment  in 
elemental  physics  with  which  we  are  all  more 
or  less  familiar. 

In  it  a  beam  of  sunlight  is  passed  through  a 
prism  and  is  thereby  separated  —  like  a  fan 
that  our  hands  have  opened  —  into  the  rain- 
bow-hued  shafts  of  its  component  color  rays. 
These  are  then  caught  upon  a  screen  and  the 
audience  allowed  to  examine  them  —  allowed 
to  see  for  itself  that  here  and  no  otherwhere  is 
the  magic  paint-box  from  which  the  world  is 
colored.  And  finally  —  that  there  may  be  no 
doubters  —  the  experiment  is  proved  by  re- 
versing it.  The  divergent  rays  are  passed 
through  a  lens  that  bends  them  back  into 
focused  reunion;  and  behold,  the  white  beam 
of  the  sunlight  is  itself  again. 

It  is,  in  reality,  a  very  similar  experiment 
that  we  are  engaged  on  in  this  book. 

265 


HOW  TO   READ 

We  have  passed  our  ability  to  read  —  that 
ability  which,  in  these  days  of  all  but  univer- 
sal literacy,  we  have  come  to  look  upon  as 
something  almost  as  natural,  almost  as  nec- 
essary, almost  as  much  to  be  taken  for  granted 
at  its  face  value,  as  sunlight  itself  —  we  have 
passed  our  ability  to  read  through  a  prism  of 
analysis  and  have  separated  it  into  the  color- 
ful factors  of  its  component  elements.  We 
have  next,  so  to  say,  thrown  these  elements  on 
a  screen  and  examined  them  separately.  And 
we  have  discovered,  to  our  initial  surprise  and 
to  our  subsequent  enlightenment,  that  we  are 
ourselves  magic  paint-boxes.  We  have  dis- 
covered that  our  ability  to  read  is  made  up  of 
nothing  less,  and  of  nothing  more,  than  of  all 
the  individual  colorings,  all  the  personal  ex- 
periences, all  the  inborn  impulses  and  unfold- 
ing forces  of  our  individual  lives. 

And  now  it  remains  for  us  to  prove  the 
value  of  our  experiment  by  reversing  it;  to  re- 
construct, that  is  to  say,  from  the  disunited 
elements  of  our  ability  to  read  and  from  the 
determined  method  of  their  proper  employ- 
ment, a  single,  illuminating  entity  —  an  atti- 
tude toward  reading. 

266 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

And  the  lens  with  which  I  have  elected  to 
do  the  necessary  focusing  —  the  phrase  that  I 
have  chosen  in  which  to  sum  up  this  attitude 

—  is  the  title  of  this  chapter. 

You  very  likely  feel  that  "the  Cosmos  a  la 
carte"  is  a  "hifalutin"  phrase.  It  no  doubt 
strikes  some  of  you  as  —  how  shall  I  put  it? 

—  as  a  trifle  "strong";  as  "going  some";  as, 
let  us  say,  "a  little  bit  of  too  much."  Some  of 
you  are  no  doubt  inclined  to  smile  and  politely 
pass  it  up  as  hyperbole.  Some  of  you  are  no 
doubt  inclined  to  frown  and  set  it  down  as 
"hot  air." 

Let  me  be  quite  frank  and  say  that  I  meant 
you  to. 

There  is  nothing  like  "  stepping  down  a  step 
that  is  n't  there"  for  making  us  realize  the 
levelness  of  a  piece  of  ground. 

There  is  nothing  like  being  certain  that  we 
have  caught  some  one  in  the  very  act  of  loose- 
minded  overstatement,  and  then  finding  that 
he  is,  after  all,  well  within  the  facts,  for  jolting 
us  into  a  recognition  of  neglected  truth. 

And  this  phrase  is  n't  "hifalutin."  It  is  n't 
hyperbolic.  It  is  n't  "hot  air."  It  is  merely  a 
slightly  fanciful  way  of  calling  attention  to 

267 


HOW  TO  READ 

the  most  basic,  the  most  primal,  the  most  uni- 
versally operative  attitude  of  all  life. 

If  you  doubt  this,  allow  me  to  introduce 
you  to  one  of  our  poorest  relations  and  most 
distant  cousins,  the  amoeba. 

ii 

The  amoeba,  as  you  doubtless  know,  is  one 
of  the  protozoa  —  one  of  the  first,  or  lowest, 
forms  of  life.  It  is  an  invisible  pellicule  of 
protoplasm;  a  microscopic  animalcule  con- 
sisting of  a  single  life-cell.  It  has  no  mouth, 
no  stomach,  no  sense-organs,  no  limbs.  It 
lives  in  the  sea  and  it  moves  from  place  to 
place  by  occasionally  protruding  portions  of 
its  jelly-like  substance  and  sculling  with  these 
temporary  fins.  And  when,  on  its  tiny  jour- 
neys, it  encounters  bits  of  floating  matter 
smaller  than  itself,  it  wraps  its  soft  cell-stuff 
round  them,  —  engulfs  these  microscopic 
atoms  in  its  own  microscopic  mass,  —  and 
either  absorbs  them,  if  they  prove  absorbable, 
or  rejects  them  if  they  don't.  And  this  —  ex- 
cept occasionally  to  divide  itself  in  two  and 
thus  double  the  size  of  its  own  family  —  is  all 
that  it  ever  does. 

268 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

Here,  then,  on  the  lowest  rung  of  the  ladder 
of  life,  here,  still  lingering  at  the  source  from 
which  we  have  all  derived,  is  a  literal  and  liv- 
ing embodiment  of  my  "hifalutin"  phrase. 
For  the  amoeba's  sole  attitude  toward  the 
cosmos  is  that  the  cosmos  is  edible.  And  it 
spends  its  life  making  experiments  with  the 
menu. 

in 

"But  what,"  you  may  perhaps  ask,  "has 
this  to  do  with  reading?" 

The  proper  and  final  answer  to  that  ques- 
tion is  "Everything."  But  first,  let  us  move  a 
few  million  years  up  the  scale  of  development. 

Did  you  ever  notice  that  a  human  baby, 
when  it  arrives  "trailing  clouds  of  glory  be- 
hind it,"  also  brings  along  the  amoeba  attitude 
toward  the  cosmos?  That  it,  too,  regards  the 
universe  solely  as  edible,  and  conveys  every 
fragment  of  it  that  its  little  hands  get  hold  of 
to  its  mouth? 

Let  us  see  how  this  happens  and  what  it 
means. 

Millions  of  years  separate  Man  as  we  know 
him  —  Man  with  his  complex  physical  organ- 

269 


HOW  TO  READ 

ization  and  his  developed  mentality  —  from 
the  one-celled  creatures  that  were  his  earliest 
ancestors.  But  the  individual  human  baby  is 
not  thus  separated.  The  individual  baby, 
newly  born,  is  but  a  few  short  months  removed 
from  having  been  a  microscopic,  one-celled  or- 
ganism itself.  Moreover,  in  those  few  months, 
it  has  physically  rehearsed  (like  a  scholar, 
who  reviews  in  a  day  the  lessons  of  a  term) 
the  whole  physical  history  of  the  race's  climb. 
It  has  been  in  turn  a  two-celled,  a  four-celled, 
an  eight-celled  organism.  It  has  been  the  cup- 
shaped  cell-mass  that  corresponds  to  a  sponge. 
It  has  been  a  worm-like  creature  with  a  puls- 
ing tube  for  a  heart.  It  has  been  a  fish-like  be- 
ing and  breathed  through  gills.  It  has  had  the 
two-chambered  heart  of  a  fish,  and  the  three- 
chambered  heart  of  a  frog,  before  it  developed 
the  four-chambered  heart  of  a  mammal.  It  has 
been  a  "quadruped"  with  four  limbs  alike. 
It  has  worn  hair  from  head  to  heel.  It  has 
grown,  and  discarded,  a  long  tail. 

And  even  when  it  is  born,  it  is  not  yet,  ex- 
cept in  intention  and  promise,  a  human  being. 
It  is  still  merely  a  creature  on  the  road  to  be- 
coming human  —  a  creature  that  has  already 

270 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

developed  the  body  of  a  baby,  but  that  still 
retains  the  mind  of  an  amoeba. 

On  the  physical  side,  the  long  recapitula- 
tory journey  from  protozoon  to  man  is  well 
advanced.  But  on  the  psychic  side  the  jour- 
ney is  not  yet  begun.  The  entire  development 
from  "amoeba  attitude"  to  "man  attitude" 
remains  to  be  carried  out.  All  the  marvelous 
overtones  of  Man's  emotional,  intellectual,  and 
spiritual  appetites  have  still  to  be  evolved  from, 
and  superimposed  on,  the  basic  hunger  of  the 
protozoon. 

IV 

Do  you  doubt  the  possibility  of  this  transi- 
tion ? 

Did  you  ever  watch  a  baby  a  few  days  old 
nuzzle  at  its  mother's  breast,  and  then  fall 
asleep  in  the  very  act  of  suckling  —  at  the  in- 
stant, that  is  to  say,  of  achieved  satisfaction? 
And  did  you  ever  watch  the  same  baby,  a  few 
weeks  later,  although  its  hunger  had  been 
sated,  fret  for  its  mother's  lullaby;  and  then 
fall  asleep,  suddenly,  in  the  middle  of  a 
rhythm  ? 

If  you  have,  you  have  watched  one  of  the 

271 


HOW  TO  READ 

many  beginnings  of  that  other  recapitulatory 
journey —  the  journey  from  physical  hunger 
to  mental  appetites. 

For  this  latter  falling  to  sleep  also  marks 
the  instant  of  an  achieved  satisfaction.  A  sat- 
isfaction still  physical,  but  no  longer  gastric. 
The  satisfaction  of  what  is,  as  yet,  a  mere 
faint  bodily  appetite;  but  which  will,  some 
day,  develop  into  a  spiritual  hunger. 

For  what  has  happened  is  this:  the  baby 
(not  being  deaf,  like  the  imagined  "Helen 
Keller"  of  our  discussion  of  "The  World 
Outside  Us  and  the  World  Within")  has  sensed 
a  relationship,  other  than  that  of  food  and 
hunger,  between  the  world  outside  it  and  its 
inner  life.  It  has  sensed  the  relationship  be- 
tween the  physical  rhythm  of  its  mother's 
song,  and  the  physical  rhythms  of  its  own 
body;  the  rhythms  of  its  beating  heart,  its 
pulsing  arteries,  its  expanding  and  contract- 
ing lungs,  its  breath  alternately  intaken  and 
exhaled.  And  where,  awhile  ago,  it  was  con- 
tent and  fell  asleep  when  it  had  hungered  and 
been  fed,  it  now  instinctively  craves  and  cla- 
mors for  a  periodic  renewal  of  this  other,  com- 
fortable sensing;  and  sleeps  when  that  is  sated. 

272 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

It  has  discovered  a  new  dish  on  the  cosmic 
menu. 

It  has,  let  us  put  it,  sensed  something  in  the 
world  outside  it,  that  is  not  food,  and  that  yet, 
somehow,  belongs  to  it. 

And  have  we  not  already,  in  the  course  of 
our  previous  inquiry,  seen  a  child,  a  little 
further  advanced  on  this  journey,  —  "the  in- 
habitant," we  then  described  it,  "of  a  world 
where  there  was  already  rhyme,  but  not  yet 
reason,"  —  reading  Mother  Goose  with  a 
satisfaction  that  was  not  wholly  physical,  yet 
not  wholly  mental;  and  discovering  in  the 
process  something  that  was  its  own  —  "finding 
itself"  as  we  said? 

Have  we  not,  indeed,  already,  in  our  seek- 
ing for  a  Sense  of  Direction,  followed  one 
phase  of  this  journey  up  through  childhood 
and  adolescence  to  the  final  culmination  of 
maturity;  and  found,  at  every  stage,  —  from 
the  rhymes  of  Mother  Goose  to  the  gospels  of 
the  elect,  —  that  the  travelers  were  but  discov- 
ering their  own;  formulating  what  belonged 
to  them ;  "  finding,"  as  we  said,  "  themselves  "  ? 

It  is  the  universal  impetus  —  this  search 
for  our  own. 

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HOW  TO  READ 

It  is  the  essence  of  that  upward  urge  that 
has  immemorially  driven  our  race;  that  has 
driven  it  from  being  "amcebas"  into  being 
men;  that  will  yet  drive  it  into  being  what  no 
man  can  now  foresee. 

Not  merely  in  metaphor,  but  in  biologic 
fact,  the  acts  and  attitudes  that  we  speak  of 
as  "drinking  in  beauty,"  as  "having  an  om- 
nivorous mind,"  as  "hungering  and  thirsting 
after  righteousness,"  are  sublimated  forms  of 
the  primal  hunger.  They  are  subtler  searchings 
for  our  own  on  the  menu  of  a  Cosmos  a  la  carte. 

In  short,  this  search  is  the  Law  of  Life. 

And  it  is  also  the  focus-giving  fact  that  we 
are  seeking. 

For,  since  reading,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a  form 
of  living,  we  can  best  state  our  right  attitude 
toward  it  in  terms  of  Life-law.  And  so,  in  order 
to  get  our  definition  of  that  attitude  into  a 
concrete  form  that  we  can  examine  and  ad- 
just ourselves  to,  we  will  put  it  that  Reading 

SHOULD    BE   A   ZESTFUL,   CONSCIOUS,   DISCRIMI- 
NATING SEARCH  FOR  OUR  OWN. 


274 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 


v 

Do  you  remember  that,  in  our  early  discus- 
sions, when  we  discovered  that  we  have  to 
find  our  own  materials  in  which  to  retell  for 
ourselves  an  author's  story,  and  that  we  even 
have  to  find  our  own  meanings  for  the  words 
in  which  the  story  is  written,  we  discovered 
that  we  do  not  always  find  the  right  word- 
meaning  first ?  That  we  "react  automatically  " 
to  words  and  then  criticize  the  reactions? 

And  do  you  remember  that  it  was  there 
pointed  out  that  this  method  —  to  feel  first, 
and  then  examine  our  feelings;  to  react  spon- 
taneously to  life,  and  then  accept  or  reject  the 
reactions  —  is  the  only  method  we  have  of 
finding  personal  meanings,  whether  for  words 
or  for  the  world  ? 

And  do  you  remember  that  it  was  further 
pointed  out,  there  and  thereafter,  that  the 
understanding  of  these  facts  and  the  employ- 
ment of  this  method  are  the  only  sources  of 
genuine  cultural  growth  and  attainment? 

Please  note,  then,  that  this  method  is  the 
method  of  the  amoeba,  which  first  engulfs  its 
atom,  and  then  either  absorbs  or  rejects  it. 

275 


HOW  TO  READ 

It  is  the  ancestral  method.  By  it,  and  by  it 
only,  can  we  discriminate  our  own,  anywhere 
in  life.  And  by  it,  and  by  it  only,  can  we  make 
that,  which  should  be  our  own,  ours.  Please 
note,  also,  that  our  friend  George  —  he  of  the 
cold-storage  mind  — does  not  use  this  method. 
He  engulfs  as  many  atoms  as  he  can  hold;  but 
neither  absorbs,  nor  rejects,  any.  He  is  the 
kind  of  reader  that  Lord  Bacon  must  have  had 
in  mind  when  he  said  that  "reading  maketh 
a  full  man."  He  mistakes  the  Cosmos  for  a 
table  d'hote. 

VI 

But  we  are  adopting  a  very  different  atti- 
tude; and  our  discussion  of  "Intellectual  Di- 
gestion" in  the  seventh  chapter  was  really  un- 
dertaken in  order  to  lay  the  foundation  for  a 
proper  understanding,  at  this  point,  (i)  of  the 
true  nature  of  this  reading-search  for  our  own, 
and  (2)  of  the  way  we  can  best  translate  this 
understanding  into  efficient  practice.  For  not 
everything  in  any  book  "belongs  to  us."  And, 
of  what  does,  only  so  much  is  ever  actually 
made  ours  through  reading  as  we  intellectu- 
ally digest,  in  addition  to  mentally  engulfing. 

276 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

Let  us  now  look,  then,  with  this  in  mind,  at 
a  few  obvious  facts  of  reading,  the  meaning  of 
which  we  seldom  seek  for. 

There  are  many  books  in  every  department 
(and  there  are  few  of  us  who  have  not  had 
some  experience  with  them)  that  we  read, 
with  fresh  profit,  at  successive  stages  of  our 
development;  books  in  which,  at  each  reread- 
ing, we  find  something  now  "belonging  to  us" 
that  was  not  even  potentially  "ours"  before. 

Sometimes  this  is  because  we  have,  in  the 
mean  while,  acquired  the  necessary  raw  ma- 
terials of  experience  with  which  to  read  these 
books  more  fully. 

Sometimes  this  is  merely  because,  in  the 
mean  while,  we  have  developed  new  skill  in 
the  right  using  of  our  old  material. 

Sometimes  it  is  because,  in  the  mean  while, 
we  have  developed  new  needs  that  were  dor- 
mant in  our  younger  selves. 

But,  generally  speaking,  these  new  discov- 
eries, in  books  that  we  have  already  read,  of 
things  that  are  potentially  ours,  and  these 
new  successes  at  making  them  so,  are  the  out- 
come of  all  three  of  these  causes  combined  in 
various  proportions. 

277 


HOW  TO  READ 

Again,  there  are  many  books  in  every  de- 
partment (and  again  there  are  few  of  us  who 
have  not  had  some  experience  with  them) 
that  we  read  once  with  conscious  enjoyment  or 
personal  profit;  but  of  which  a  later  reading 
leaves  us  puzzled  to  understand  "  what  we  ever 
saw  in  them." 

Sometimes  this  is  because,  at  our  first  read- 
ing, they  synthesized  certain  portions  of  ex- 
perience for  us  (and  these  syntheses  may  be 
either  the  explanatory  ones  of  elementary 
science  or  the  imaginative  ones  of  simple- 
mooded  fiction)  that  we  now  know  our  way 
through  blindfold,  and  so  no  longer  realize  the 
sense  of  rightful  ownership  we  felt  in  our  first 
finding  of  them  thus  simply  grouped. 

Sometimes  this  is  because,  while  in  our 
first  reading  we  found  these  books  adequate 
moulds  into  which  to  pour  some  inchoate 
hope  or  dream  or  tentative  realization  of  re- 
lationship, fictional,  philosophical,  historical, 
or  what-not,  the  fuller  store  of  our  later  mould- 
needing  material  finds  them  inadequate  to  its 
purposes,  and  we  forget  their  former  ade- 
quacy. 

Sometimes  this  is  because,  at  our  first  read- 
278 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

ing,  these  books  ministered  to  a  typical  but 
temporary  need  —  childish,  adolescent,  or  de- 
velopmental —  that  we  have  since  outgrown, 
have  perhaps  forgotten,  and  have  even  possi- 
bly come,  while  remembering,  to  despise. 

But  again,  generally  speaking,  all  of  these 
reasons  are  present  in  varying  proportions 
when  we  thus  discover  that  a  book,  once 
seemingly  full  of  what  by  right  belonged  to  us, 
is  now  comparatively  empty,  wholly  worth- 
less, or  even  despicable. 

And  a  proper  balancing  against  each  other 
of  these  two  sets  of  facts  from  our  common 
reading  experience  will  go  far  toward  making 
clear  to  us  the  true  meaning,  both  of  what 
progressively  and  changingly  constitutes  "our 
own,"  and  of  the  step-by-step  methods  of  our 
only  efficient  search  for  it. 

VII 

Even  Science  and  Philosophy,  we  must  re- 
member, constantly  invent  explanations  and 
hypotheses;  find  them  useful  while  they  cover, 
and  seem  to  co-relate,  all  the  facts  till  then 
observed  in  a  particular  field;  swear  by  them 
more  or  less  dogmatically  while  maintained; 

279 


HOW  TO  READ 

use  them  as  stepping-stones  to  new  investi- 
gations and  as  tests  of  new  discoveries;  end 
by  discarding  them  when  outgrown  and  dis- 
credited, and  frequently  look  back  upon  them 
with  contempt. 

And  this  is  but  another  way  of  expressing 
the  use  we  have  made  of  those  books  once 
found  full  of  meaning,  but  later  discovered  to 
be  empty. 

And  even  Science  and  Philosophy,  those 
great,  organized,  supposedly  authoritative 
forms  of  humanity's  search  for  its  own  in  the 
chaos  of  experience,  are  constantly  going  back 
and  discovering  that  their  own  growth  has 
enabled  them  to  find  new  meanings  and  new 
mysteries  in  chapters  of  the  Great  Book  that 
they  had  already  read  and  had  thought  to 
have  read  fully. 

And  this  is  but  another  way  of  expressing 
the  fresh  discoveries  we  make  in  old  books 
whose  real  "conceptions"  were  bigger  than 
our  first  formulations  of  them. 

VIII 

But  what  the  Science,  and  the  Philosophy, 
and  the  You  and  the  I  of  any  particular  mo 

280 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

ment  are  all  prone  to  lose  sight  of,  is  the  fact 
that  it  is  partly  with  the  actually  digested  and 
assimilated  essences  of  these  old  and  perhaps 
exploded  explanations,  of  these  old  and  per- 
haps abandoned  hypotheses,  of  these  old  and 
perhaps  now  despicable  "  readings,"  that  they, 
and  we,  in  our  respective  fields,  are  now  pursu- 
ing our  enlarging  search. 

Thus  the  chemist  of  to-day  is  thinking  in 
part  with  the  truths  digested  out  of  the  crude 
syntheses  of  alchemy. 

Thus  the  idealist  of  to-day  is  more  be- 
holden than  he  sometimes  likes  to  acknowl- 
edge to  those  who  first  made  idols  and  wor- 
shiped them.  For  the  idol  was  the  wooden 
synthesis  of  a  crude  idealism ;  and  in  the  higher 
truth  of  all  human  worship  there  circulates 
to-day  some  transubstantiated  essence  of  the 
idolater's  gropings  after  truth. 

Thus  John  Smith,  formulating  for  himself 
(in  reading  W.  H.  Hudson's  romance  of  Cen- 
tral America,  "Green  Mansions")  a  new  syn- 
thesis of  relations  between  the  naive  brutali- 
ties of  savage  life,  the  scientific  marvels  of 
nature-study,  and  the  basic  yearnings  of  the 
human  heart,  may  unwittingly  be  building 

281 


HOW  TO  READ 

into  his  creative  structure  something  of  what 
he  first  wonderingly  found  and  made  his  own 
in  reading  that  once  gladly  accepted,  but 
now  ridiculous-seeming  "appearance  of  com- 
pleteness," Mayne  Reid's  "Afloat  in  the 
Forest." 

IX 

Our  minds,  it  seems,  like  our  bodies,  grow 
by  what  they  feed  on.  But,  like  our  bodies, 
our  minds  do  not  grow  by  means  of  the  con- 
taining husks  and  form-giving  fibers  that  in 
time  they  digestively  reject,  but  by  whatso- 
ever of  the  nutritive  contents  of  these  they 
assimilate  and  make  their  own. 

And  now,  with  this  idea  also  in  mind,  let  us 
again  look  at  some  of  the  obvious  facts  of  our 
common  reading  experience. 

One  may  read  a  volume  on  science,  or  an 
essay  upon  some  philosophical  conception, 
and  be  so  poorly  equipped  with  technical 
knowledge  that  one  does  little  more,  in  the 
reading,  than  formulate  for  one's  self  a  vague 
idea  —  the  hazy  conception  of  a  point  of  view 
bigger  than  one's  own. 

Later  on,  one  may  come  to  discard  this  idea 

282 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

as  fallacious,  or  arrive  at  regarding  this  point 
of  view  as  dwarfing. 

And  yet,  meanwhile,  they  may  have  func- 
tioned for  us  —  these  experimental  syntheses 
■ —  as  incentives  to  further  searchings,  as  dis- 
closers of  new  possibilities,  as  touchstones 
and  criteria  of  "ownership." 

On  the  other  hand,  one  may  read  such  a 
book  and  be  utterly  incapable  of  grasping  the 
synthetic  idea  contained  in  it;  yet  may  inci- 
dentally formulate  for  one's  self,  in  reading 
it,  a  dozen  subsidiary  realizations  of  fact-re- 
lationship or  idea-relationship  that  one  uses 
thereafter  as  building-blocks  in  future  formu- 
lations; that  one  gradually  combines  with 
other  similar  realizations,  the  personal  mean- 
ings of  which  one  slowly  and  digestively  as- 
similates into  one's  attitude  toward  the  world. 

And  the  same  thing  is  true  of  fiction. 

One  may  read  a  story  and  get  little  from 
reading  it  beyond  the  vividly  emotionalized 
facing  of  a  situation;  or  the  eager,  "I-told- 
you-so"  notion  of  a  proved  moral;  or  a  sense 
of  violent  antipathy  to  "that  way  of  looking 
at  things." 

And  one  may  —  indeed,  one  must  —  use 

283 


HOW  TO  READ 

these  hazy  findings  of  what  belongs  to  one  as 
parts  of  one's  future  equipment. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  one  may  read  a 
novel  and  discover  no  wholeness  to  it  at  all; 
yet  have  a  dozen  things  "happen  in  one"  in 
the  course  of  the  reading  that  prove,  later,  to 
have  been  true  "findings  of  one's  own." 

And  of  course  the  same  thing  is  true  of  a 
history,  an  autobiography,  a  religious  treatise, 
or  any  other  printed  invitation  to  compare 
notes  on  life,  past,  present,  or  to  come. 

x 

All  our  reading,  then,  no  matter  how  un- 
skillful or  how  unsophisticated  it  may  be, 
proves  on  examination  to  be  eclectic. 

And  we  see,  moreover,  that  this  eclecticism, 
even  when  unconscious  and  undirected,  is  ex- 
ercised in  two  typical  manners:  (i)  it  seizes 
upon,  and  makes  future  use  of,  the  synthetic 
aspects  of  the  book  read;  or  (2)  it  seizes  upon, 
and  makes  future  use  of,  component  details 
used  by  the  author  in  his  attempted  synthesis. 
Or  it  does  both. 

And  the  efficient  application  to  practice  of 
our  defined   attitude   toward   reading  must 

284 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

therefore  be  sought  through  a  gradual  develop- 
ing in  ourselves  of  a  more  conscious,  zestful,  and 
discriminating  eclecticism:  —  an  eclecticism 
eager  for  the  discovery,  in  everything  we  read, 
of  "our  own"  in  either  of  these  forms;  and  an 
eclecticism  progressively  able  and  willing  to 
accept  either,  at  its  full  value,  without  prej- 
udice to  the  other,  while  at  the  same  time 
looking  hopefully  for  the  greater  discovery 
of  their  complete  combining.  S.uch  a  combin- 
ing, for  instance,  as  comes  to  us  when  a  great 
novel  helps  us  to  build  the  disregarded  facts  of 
our  common  lives,  the  partial  philosophies  of 
our  daily  using,  the  accepted  "  science  "  of  our 
passing  civilization,  into  successively  reveal- 
ing syntheses  of  understanding,  and  finally 
welds  these  rhythmically  assembled  parts  into 
the  interpretative  "completeness"  of  an  out- 
look, and  at  the  same  time  leads  our  art- 
roused  sense  of  "need"  to  an  art-achieved  ful- 
fillment. Or  such  a  combining,  again,  as  one 
may  find  in  the  writings  of  the  French  en- 
tomologist, Henri  Fabre.  Fabre  had  the  scien- 
tist's passion  for  truth,  the  unassuming  cul- 
ture of  the  scholar,  the  unifying  imagination 
of  the  poet,  the  dramatist's  sense  of  the  tragic 

285 


HOW  TO  READ 

and  mysterious,  the  outlook  of  the  philosopher 
and  the  creativeness  of  the  artist.  His  books 
are  about  bugs.  But  their  insect  actors  cast 
shadows  on  the  stars. 

XI 

But  there  is  a  reverse  side  to  every  medal. 
And  besides  developing  a  more  open-minded 
and  receptive  and  discriminating  eclecticism 
in  the  realm  of  what  really  belongs  to  us,  we 
need  also  to  discourage  —  at  least  to  the 
extent  of  recognizing  its  true  character  — 
another  kind  of  eclecticism  that  we  all  prac- 
tice more  or  less  unintelligently  in  the  realm 
of  what,  in  the  strictest  sense,  does  not  as  yet 
belong  to  us. 

And  here  again  our  seventh  chapter  in- 
quiry into  the  matter  of  Intellectual  Digestion 
will  help  us  to  an  easier  understanding. 

The  mere  acceptance  —  the  "swallowing 
whole"  —  of  statements  of  alleged  fact,  no 
matter  how  trustworthy,  or  of  pronounced 
opinions,  no  matter  how  "  authoritative,"  may 
stock  our  memories  with  useful  material — ■ 
useful  for  certain  experiments,  or  as  points  of 
departure  for  future  inquiry,  or  as  subject- 

286 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

matter  for  future  testing-out.  But,  so  far  from 
such  mere  acceptance  making  these  things 
"ours,"  it  frequently  results  in  preventing  our 
ever  discovering  in  them  that  which  should 
by  rights  belong  to  us. 

If,  for  example,  in  the  exercise  of  this  bas- 
tard eclecticism,  one  uncritically  accepts  as 
personally  and  finally  valid  the  orders  of  some 
critic,  or  specialist,  or  teacher  (no  matter  how- 
celebrated)  as  to  what  we  must  think  of  a 
picture,  or  what  we  must  find  in  a  book,  or 
how  we  must  regard  some  political  theory,  or 
what  we  must  believe  in  religion,  one  closes  by 
that  supine  act  of  acceptance  the  only  door 
that  opens  into  real  "ownership"  in  that  par- 
ticular synthesis  of  recognizable  relationship. 

"But,"  many  readers  are  likely  to  exclaim 
at  this  point,  "are  we  not  to  accept,  then,  as 
valid,  the  declaration  of  Science  that  it  is  so 
and  so  many  million  miles  to  the  sun;  that  so 
much  oxygen  and  so  much  hydrogen,  properly 
combined,  form  water;  and  all  the  thousands 
of  other  authoritative  declarations  about 
things  that  we  need  to  know,  but  have  no 
chance  to  find  out  for  ourselves?"  And  the 
answer  to  this  question  is  very  simple,  for  the 

287 


HOW  TO  READ 

question  has  to  do  with  a  difficulty  that  is 
really  only  a  confusion.  The  fact  being  that 
we  accept  the  statements  of  others  only  in  so 
far,  and  for  so  long,  as  their  truth  does  not 
personally  concern  us. 

Science  tells  us  that  it  is  ninety-four  million 
miles  to  the  sun;  and  we  accept  the  statement 
humbly  and  gratefully  and  admiringly. 

Later  on,  Science  comes  round  and  says 
that  it  is  sorry,  but  it  finds  that  it  has  made  a 
mistake.  It  is  only  ninety-two  and  a  half  mil- 
lion miles  to  the  sun.  And  we  accept  the  new 
statement  just  as  readily  and  as  humbly  as 
the  first.  But  the  real  reason  for  this  is  that 
the  only  personal  use  we  make  of  this  "  knowl- 
edge" is  to  use  the  supposed  distance  to  the 
sun  as  a  means  of  trying  to  conceive  the  dis- 
tances of  inter-stellar  space;  and  for  this  pur- 
pose one  of  these  distances  is  as  useful  as  the 
other. 

Again,  Science  tells  us  to-day  that  under  cer- 
tain circumstances  two  atoms  of  oxygen  and 
one  of  hydrogen  will  rush  joyously  together 
and  form  a  molecule  of  water;  and  that  under 
other  circumstances  these  same  atoms  will 
find  each  other's  company  unsupportable  and 

288 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

will  rush  apart  and  resume  their  original 
status.  And  we  accept  the  statement,  humble 
and  marveling.  But  if,  to-morrow,  Science 
came  round  and  told  us  that  it  was  sorry,  but 
it  found  that  it  had  overlooked  something; 
namely,  that  it  was  only  when  a  little  radium 
was  present,  —  say  an  eightieth  of  a  grain  in 
a  gallon  of  water,  —  that  these  things  ever 
happened,  we  should  accept  the  new  state- 
ment as  complacently  as  the  first;  and  should 
continue  to  discriminate  just  as  eclectically 
as  before  between  the  bottled  waters  offered 
us  by  the  Undine  Spring  Company  and  the 
Hygienic  Distilling  Corporation.  For  the 
truth  is  that  the  only  personal  use  most  of  us 
ever  make  of  the  statements  of  Science  about 
the  composition  of  water  is  to  use  them  as  im- 
aginative items  in  our  building-up  of  a  con- 
ception of  the  marvelously  intricate  nature  of 
matter,  of  the  almost  human  loves  and  hates 
and  liaisons  and  fallings-out  of  "chemical 
affinity,"  and  of  the  relations  these  bear  to 
modern  industry  and  modern  thought.  And 
for  this  purpose  one  of  these  statements  is  as 
serviceable  as  the  other. 

But   suppose   one   was    a   manufacturing 

289 


HOW  TO  READ 

chemist,  excited  by  the  new  declaration  be- 
cause it  suggested  the  possibility  of  his  ex- 
tracting radium  from  Lake  Michigan.  Do 
you  imagine  for  a  moment  that  he  would  ac- 
cept the  new  declaration  without  personal  in- 
vestigation? Or  build  a  plant  until  he  had 
digested  out  of  that  investigation's  results  the 
"personal  meanings"  of  the  discovery? 

But  enough  of  Science.  Let  us  come  down 
to  the  practical  plane  of  household  practice. 
You  get,  let  us  say,  your  bread  from  a  baker. 
But  in  glancing  over  the  pages  of  Mrs.  Roast- 
em's  cookbook,  you  come  upon  the  statement 
that  four  eggs  are  the  proper  number  to  use 
in  making  corn  muffins.  If  Mrs.  Roastem  is 
your  favorite  authority,  you  accept  the  state- 
ment unconditionally,  and  even  pass  the  in- 
formation on  to  inquiring  friends,  rather  proud 
that  the  corner  of  Authority's  mantle  should 
thus  for  a  moment  rest  on  your  shoulder.  And 
if,  next  year,  a  new  edition  of  Mrs.  Roastem's 
book  advises  three  eggs  instead  of  four,  you 
accept  the  revision  without  question,  and  per- 
haps even  boast  to  your  advisees  that  Mrs.  R. 
has  found  a  way  of  making  muffins  with  three 
eggs. 
290 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

But  suppose  that  you  make  up  your  mind 
to  try  your  own  hand  at  making  corn  muffins. 
Which  authority  finally  determines  for  you 
what  is  "your  own"  in  that  recipe  —  Mrs. 
Roastem,  or  your  palate  and  your  digestion? 

XII 

There  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  but  three 
services,  broadly  speaking,  that  any  teacher 
or  expounder  or  commentator  or  critic  can 
render  us. 

One  of  these  is  the  important  and  necessary, 
but  none-the-less  humble,  service  of  supply- 
ing our  memories  with  storable  raw  materials 
of  alleged  "facts,"  of  supposed  relationships, 
and  of  the  existence  of  this,  that,  or  the  other 
decision  about  these,  arrived  at  by  this,  that, 
or  the  other  investigator. 

The  other  two  services  are  of  a  higher  order; 
of  opposed  but  mutually  complementary  char- 
acter, and  hence  of  equal  value. 

One  of  them  is  to  help  us  (by  inducing  us 
constructively  and  critically  to  agree  with 
them)  to  a  more  intelligent  synthetic  formula- 
tion of  our  own  reactions  to  life. 

The  other  is  to  help  us   (by  inducing  us 

291 


HOW  TO  READ 

,  constructively  and  critically  to  disagree  with 
them)  to  more  intelligent  syntheses  of  these 
same  personal  reactions. 

And  there  is  no  more  fatal  bar  to  the  pro- 
gressive and  successful  reduction  to  practice 
of  our  accepted  attitude  toward  reading  than 
habitually  to  allow  the  first  of  these  author 
services  to  take  for  us  the  place  of  the  other 
two. 

XIII 

One  might  fill  a  book  with  examples  of  the 
emotional  and  intellectual  and  spiritual  lanes- 
leading-to-our-own  that  are  blocked  and 
turned  into  no-thoroughfares  for  us  by  this 
practice. 

But  one  common  and  typical  instance  will 
suffice  —  an  instance  so  common  that  we  con- 
stantly see  examples  of  it;  and  so  typical  that 
we  should  always  regard  them  as  final  reduc- 
tions-to-absurdity  of  the  idea  that  we  do  not 
need  to  seek  our  own,  or  to  digest  it  out  of 
what  we  find,  but  can  rest  content  in  being 
told  by  another  what  it  is. 

We  all  know  people  who  will  read  a  book  in 
the  firm  conviction  that  they  are  getting  a 

292 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

great  deal  out  of  it,  and  who,  in  that  convic- 
tion, voraciously  "  swallow  whole  "  all  its  state- 
ments, opinions,  theories,  and  explanations; 
but  who,  if  they  chance  upon  some  declara- 
tion in  it  that  they  know  of  their  own  knowl- 
edge to  be  inaccurate,  will  "unswallow" 
everything  they  had  taken  in  (which,  having 
digested  none  of  it,  they  are  able  to  do)  and 
will  toss  the  book  aside,  declaring  that  "if  it  is 
wrong  in  that  it  may  be  wrong  in  everything" 
and  that  it  is  of  no  further  use  to  them,  since 
they  no  longer  know  "what  to  believe  and 
what  not  to." 

These  are  the  people  who,  a  few  generations 
since,  ceased  to  believe  in  God  when  they  be- 
gan to  believe  in  Darwin. 

And  the  root  of  their  trouble  —  and  of  ours, 
since  it  is  a  trouble  from  which  none  of  us  is 
free  —  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  have  not  yet 
even  begun  to  learn  the  thing  that  none  of  us 
has  wholly  learned;  namely,  that,  while  under- 
standing and  faith  must  both  feed  on  external 
things,  they  must  both  be  generated  within  us. 


293 


HOW  TO  READ 

XIV 

Understanding  and  faith :  These  are  the  two 
forms  that  all  our  successful  seekings  for  our 
own  take  on.  They  are  equally  changeable 
and  fallible.  They  are  equally  subject  to  the 
laws  of  growth  by  digestion  and  assimilation. 
They  are  equally  incapable  of  reaching  "ul- 
timate truth."  Yet  they  are  the  equal  and 
final  storehouses  of  the  harvest  of  living. 

All  that  is  significant  to  the  seer  in  his  "at- 
titude toward  the  Cosmos"  and  toward  the 
unknowable  Power  that  stands  behind  it  or 
pervades  it,  is  summed  up  in  these  two  terms. 
And  all  that  is  significant  to  the  miser,  gloat- 
ing on  the  dulling  dollars  in  an  old  hair  trunk, 
is  similarly  to  be  summed  up. 

And  since,  while  generated  within  us,  un- 
derstanding and  faith  both  feed  on  external 
things,  —  on  the  concreteness  of  our  own  con- 
tacts with  life  and  on  such  comparings  of  notes 
as  we  are  able  to  carry  on  with  our  fellows,  — 
the  homely  problem  of  the  "balanced  ration" 
enters  into  all  our  dealings  with  their  nourish- 
ment. 

We  have  already  seen  that  our  own  con- 

294 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

crete  contacts  with  life  and  our  own  germinal 
"ideas"  derived  therefrom  are  the  basic  raw 
materials  of  our  reading.  We  have  already 
seen  that  it  is  in  part  with  such  increments 
of  understanding  and  faith  as  we  digest  out  of 
our  old  reading  that  we  carry  on  our  new. 
And  we  must  not  forget  that  these  new  read- 
ings must,  taken  together  with  our  new  liv- 
ing, constitute  in  some  sort  a  "balanced  ra- 
tion," if  the  understanding  and  faith  we  build 
from  them  are  to  be  sound  and  serviceable. 

We  cannot  practice  to  the  full  the  right 
reading  of  modern  fiction  if  we  are  utterly 
ignorant  of  modern  thought.  We  cannot  prac- 
tice to  the  full  the  right  reading  of  even  the 
simplest  conceptions  of  modern  thought  if  we 
are  utterly  ignorant  of  modern  science.  We 
cannot  bring  to  the  reading  of  the  simplest 
scientific  textbook  the  "curiosity"  that  fur- 
nishes the  motive  power  of  our  reading  if  we 
walk  the  modern  world  without  something  of 
that  will  to  inquire  into  its  phenomena  that 
every  child  possesses. 

Right  reading  is  not  a  trick.  It  is  a  struc- 
ture. It  is  built  up  from  the  digested  satisfy- 
ings  of  a  myriad  curiosities  —  curiosities  from 

295 


HOW  TO  READ 

which,  on  the  one  hand,  its  materials  are  de- 
rived, and  from  which,  on  the  other,  its  meth- 
ods are  assembled,  like  the  growing  formula- 
tion of  a  novel's  conception.  And  its  aim  is  an 
efficient  readiness  and  ability,  based  on  prac- 
tice and  experiment,  to  make  imaginative 
combinations  of  this  material  at  the  instiga- 
tion of  the  author,  in  the  zestful  seeking  for 
what  these  may  disclose  in,  and  for,  ourselves. 

Perhaps  you  are  one  of  those  who  have  kept 
hanging  up,  in  your  heart,  a  motto,  worked  in 
mental  worsted  on  a  bit  of  intellectual  bristol 
board  —  a  motto  reading  "  Live,  and  let  live." 
If  so,  and  if  you  would  learn  right  reading, 
take  this  motto  down  and  hang  up  in  its  place 
one  with  the  inscription,  "Live,  and  compare 
notes."  And  then,  when  you  are  "reading 
your  book,"  remember  George  of  the  cold- 
storage  mind,  and    remember  the  amoeba. 

Is  there  a  simile  in  the  sentence  before  you? 
Engulf  it.  Test  yourself  quickly  with  it  for 
anything  that  it  may  disclose  to,  or  in,  or  for, 
you,  either  of  beauty  or  of  meaning  or  of 
humor.  Absorb  what  you  find;  or  toss  the 
empty  husk  of  words  aside,  and  pass  on.  Is 
there  a  statement  in  a  paragraph?  A  moral 

296 


THE  COSMOS  A  LA  CARTE 

implication  in  an  incident?  A  criticism  of  life 
implicit  in  a  tale?  An  "outlook"  in  an  out- 
come? An  esthetic  stimulus  in  a  style?  An 
art-enhancement  in  a  writer's  creation?  En- 
gulf them.  Taste  them.  Test  them  by,  and 
for,  yourself.  Smack  your  mind's  lips  over 
them;  or  make  a  wry  face,  and  pass  on. 

When,  and  only  when,  you  are  doing  this, 
are  you  really  reading  —  seeking  your  own 
with  a  zestful  and  discriminating  eclecticism. 

And  when  you  are  doing  this,  you  are,  like 
the  amoeba,  taking  your  Cosmos  a  la  carte. 


THE    END 


TJN'V^SITY  OF  CALIF^' "T4 


THE  Ttptt>art 
ONIVEJ 


3  1158  00452  5332 


UG 


SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  697  873    8 


